


Dust in the Wind

by Oliviet



Category: Veronica Mars (Movie 2014), Veronica Mars (TV), Veronica Mars - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, Hurt/Comfort, and a non-Neptune or even NYC setting, keith dies, there's a road trip involved
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-20
Updated: 2021-01-17
Packaged: 2021-03-07 21:29:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 16
Words: 59,314
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26564398
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Oliviet/pseuds/Oliviet
Summary: "Sometimes the person you need most, is the one you'd least expect."Set as an AU during the movie timeframe, Keith dies unexpectedly and Logan comes back into Veronica's life after nine years of radio silence to help her get through.
Relationships: Logan Echolls/Veronica Mars
Comments: 232
Kudos: 275





	1. Chapter 1

The parking garage is eerily quiet. The only sounds come from the whir of the air conditioning coming from the building behind him and the sound of his shoes connecting with the concrete. He’s the last one to leave, as has become the habit the past couple of months, and the beeping sound of his car unlocking when he hits the button on his key fob echoes too loudly in the otherwise quiet atmosphere.

He has a weird thing with parking garages. A dormant irrational fear left over from his days spent with _her_. He’d found her under attack in one once. The sick son of a bitch having drugged her as a precursor to attempted rape and a shaved head. He’d stopped the asshole in the act, only a few of her silky strands of hair having fallen to tragedy. And he hadn’t left her side until long after the drugs had worn off. But even after all of that she hadn’t wanted to stop digging, to stop investigating. She hadn’t wanted to back down, no matter how terrified he was for her. He would always cringe when he walked by parking garages after that. Even now, nine years later, the shiver is still hard to suppress and shake off.

He almost lost her that night.

He lost her anyway.

She’s alive, yes, and as far as he knows, no one has touched her without her consent since that party back in high school. But she isn’t his. Hasn’t been in a long time, and more than likely will never be again.

And he’s okay with that. People change. They grow up and grow apart. It’s all a part of life, he knows.

But still he thinks about her from time to time. In empty parking garages and Italian restaurants and whenever he gets a whiff of something resembling marshmallows. If he closes his eyes, he can still hear her laugh, still picture that radiant, breathless smile she used to send his way. They say you never forget your first love, but what about your second? They’ve both moved on, but he fears the day when he’ll wake up unable to remember the sound of her laughter.

Nine years and he hasn’t forgotten her. Nine years and he wonders if she’s forgotten him.

He’s thinking about her tonight. In the eerie quiet of the garage, he lets the old memory sink back into his veins. It’s entirely problematic that it’s the moments of trauma from their relationship that stuck. The parking garage. The rooftop. The bridge. Maybe it’s their own fault for being each other’s comfort through so many storms and personal hells. But he thinks about her more often in the spaces haunted by their demons than he does in spaces illuminated by their light. Maybe the good memories are just too painful. Because she’s gone and so is her light. Or maybe he’s just too well adjusted to the darkness now.

Either way. There’s no going back.

His phone rings as he slides into his car. It wouldn’t be work related when it’s this late and he’s the only one still here attempting to leave. He doubts it’s Carrie. She hasn’t spoken to him in weeks. He glances down at his phone and sees a contact name flash across his screen he didn’t even realize was still in his contacts.

Wallace Fennel.

Oh god. It’s about _her_. About Veronica.

Something’s wrong.

His hands are suddenly shaking as he reaches for the phone to answer it. Why else would Wallace be calling him this late? Why else would Wallace be calling him at all?

“Hello?” Logan answers, worrying the fear in his voice will betray him.

“Logan? It’s Wallace.”

He bites back the snarky remark about caller ID. It’s not like he was obligated to keep his number in his contacts for all these years.

“Not to rush past the pleasantries, but this call is a little odd for your typical Tuesday evening, so I’m going to cut right to the chase and ask what’s wrong?”

Wallace sighs and Logan’s stomach twists into knots.

_Just spit it out, damn it!_

“It’s Keith,” Wallace tells him.

Logan lets out his breath on a long exhale. It’s not her. She’s okay.

“He uh,” Wallace keeps talking. “There was a blood clot in his leg. It dislodged and got into his airway. He was without oxygen for 30 minutes. They weren’t able to bring him back from that. The damage was already done.”

_Fuck, oh fuck._

“V’s a mess,” Wallace continues. “Mac and I have tried…we’re at a loss here.”

“How long ago did he die?” Logan asks.

“Last night. Around 10:00. We offered to call people for her, but it’s not like they have a lot of family to inform.”

Was he still family to her? He was ready to be when she thought Keith had died in a plane explosion right after high school graduation. She’d felt like family to him during those months when they’d been together and happy.

“Look,” Wallace starts again. “I know you guys haven’t spoken in a long time, but the funeral is tomorrow and Mac and I both think she could really use you there.”

“Tomorrow’s going to be hard enough on her already without me showing up. The last thing she needs is her ex-boyfriend waltzing back into her life right now, especially when that ex-boyfriend is me.”

There’s another long pause on the other line. “You have no idea what you meant to her, do you?”

He knows. In whispered confessions and stolen glances. In infectious laughter and angered yelling matches. The brush of her fingertips. The press of her lips. _He knows_.

“Wallace, she’s not going to want me there.”

“It’s not about what she wants. It’s about what she needs.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Logan asks.

He makes it sound like this is some bizarre booty call. That ship has long since sailed.

He can hear the rustling of papers on the other line. “Mac and I can’t get through to her. She’s completely zoned out. Won’t talk to anybody.”

“So, what? You’re hoping my presence will rile her up? Get her to verbalize something even if that something is harbored anger pointed at me?”

“No. I just think that she’ll talk to you. She’ll let you in.”

Logan pushes a hand through his hair. “She has no reason to do that. We haven’t said a single word to each other since that day she left Hearst and never came back.”

“See? Then you have plenty to talk about and catch up on.”

“Her dad, her favorite person in the entire world, is dead. The last time…when she thought he was on Woody’s plane…she’s not eating is she?”

“I told you she needs you.”

“What can I do that you and Mac haven’t already tried? You’re her best friends. You guys know her as well as I do. Hell, you probably know her better than I do at this point. She wouldn’t talk to me either that night after the plane blew up. That’s just –”

“Was she like this when Lilly died?”

That knocks the wind out of him. Another trauma he can never escape and put behind him no matter how hard he tries.

If he’s being honest, he can’t remember Veronica’s initial reaction to Lilly’s death. He’d been too busy spiraling himself. He hadn’t wanted to talk or see anybody or do anything other than take out his rage on something. Or on _someone_.

“I don’t remember,” Logan tells him. “She wasn’t my primary focus in that moment.”

She’d lost everything _except_ for her dad that year. Her friends, her home, her mother. _Her mother._

“Have you guys been able to track down Lianne?” Logan asks.

“Mac’s working on it,” Wallace explains. “She has a couple leads, but –”

“But she’s not Veronica,” Logan finishes. “Or Keith for that matter.”

“Yeah.”

He wants to be there for her. He stills wants to be, for whatever reason, that guy that always shows up for her when she needs it most. But he worries that she won’t want him there. They’re not teenagers anymore. She doesn’t need him there to hold her hand and tell her everything is going to be okay.

But what if she does?

_It’s not about what she wants. It’s about what she needs._

“All right. Tomorrow. Where should I meet you?” Logan asks.

“You might have to meet us at Keith’s house. I have a feeling we’re going to have to start with convincing Veronica to go.”

He remembers the look on her face when she woke up to him making pancakes and she thought the smell of food meant that her dad was home. He remembers the way her expression had changed when she saw that it was only him, her lower lip tucking between her teeth and her eyes screwing shut as she fought off more tears. He remembers her collapsing against his chest and clinging to him so tightly, as though if she let go, he would disappear on her too.

Logan wonders what kind of welcome he’ll get this time around.

* * *

The sky is overcast when Logan pulls up to the address Wallace gave him last night. Of course today of all days the weather forecast has predicted the sky will finally open up and end this drought they’ve been having. He’s always thought the universe was an asshole.

He smoothes out his suit once he steps out of his car, sizing up the house in front of him. He’d heard Keith bought a house – that Mars Investigations had been doing really well even with a “retired” Veronica living on the other side of the country attending law school. It’s a nice house. Somewhere in the back of his mind, there’s a part of him wondering if Veronica will move back to Neptune and into this place. The other part of him knows her well enough to know she’ll want to continue to stay far, far away after this.

It’s Mac who opens the door when he knocks. She looks exhausted like the emotional wear and tear of this whole situation has already taken its toll on her. 

“Wasn’t sure if you’d actually make it,” she says by way of greeting.

“Come on, Mac,” he starts, crossing his arms over his chest. “You’ve known me long enough to know I’d do anything for Veronica.”

“Yeah well, wasn’t sure if that still applied after the last break up and nine years of radio silence.”

“Am I the bad guy here?”

She seems to soften. “No, just –” She shakes her head. “Come on in.”

She steps back from the doorway and he walks past her into the house. He recognizes some of the décor from their old apartment, but most of it is new to him. He half expects Backup to come greet him, but he’s sure that dog died years ago.

“Where is she?” Logan asks.

“Guest room,” Mac says, gesturing back in that direction.

“Make any progress with her?” he asks, remembering Wallace had told him last night she wasn’t talking or eating.

“I somehow convinced her to get dressed and eat some toast, but she’s still not talking. I’m worried about her. I’ve never seen her like this.”

He has. He held her in silence for hours that night after the plane explosion until she managed to cry herself to sleep. And from the little he remembers of her from Lilly’s funeral, she’d barely spoken that day either.

“You know her,” Logan starts. “She likes to keep her emotions to herself. And if all she’s feeling right now is pure, raw emotion…”

“Then maybe inviting you was a bad idea after all,” she finishes, muttering.

“What makes you say that?”

“Please, like you don’t know.”

“Something more than our history of bringing out the worst in each other?”

And the best. There were so many moments when he caught himself thinking that she made him better.

“Nine years,” Mac says as though the time difference is supposed to clearly explain everything. “She was finally happy, you know? In New York? She finally managed to separate herself from all of the drama that seems to consume this town.”

“I’m sorry, is it somehow my fault that Keith died now?”

She lets out an exasperated sigh. “No. But seeing you again? She’s going to want to stay. All you have to do is ask and she’ll give up that entire New York life and come back here permanently.”

He almost laughs. She has to be joking, right?

“I haven’t heard from her in nine years. As far as I know, she’s still pissed about the Madison thing.”

Mac shakes her head. “She never got over you. She won’t admit it – to herself or to anyone else – but it’s obvious.”

“I thought she was finally happy with this whole brand-new life. How is she so happy if she’s still stuck pining over little old me?”

“That’s the thing. She _thinks_ she’s happy. But if you ask her to jump? Especially right now while she’s grieving and vulnerable? She –”

“I’m not here to hurt her,” Logan cuts her off. “Or to mess with her or anything like that. I’m here for support. I’m here because Wallace asked me to be. You honestly think I’d try and take advantage of her emotional state right now?”

“Honestly? No, I don’t. I’m just warning you to tread lightly. I stayed with her for a couple weeks this past summer, when work sent me to New York for a bit. I’m sure you’re aware of this, but she talks in her sleep sometimes. I’ve never asked her about it, but she sure was calling out your name a lot.”

He feels his world stop. She’d confessed to him once that she talked in her sleep when she was having a nightmare. She’d been doing it since she was a little girl. It had happened frequently that summer after the rooftop and the plane. She’d fall asleep on the couch or in his bed if Keith was out of town, and she would start mumbling his name. The trauma thing again, the way they’re so inextricably linked by their own damn demons. He wonders what’s been haunting her out in New York, and why he’s still the one her subconscious seeks out.

_She never got over you._

“I’m just here to make sure that she’s okay,” Logan tries to reassure her. “I’m not trying to turn her world on its axis or anything.”

“I know. Her father’s death did that all on its own.”

“Look, I know you and Wallace are protective of her. You guys are like her family at this point. But this is Keith Mars we’re talking about here. This is an all hands on deck sort of situation.”

Mac nods, looking back over her shoulder toward the guest room. “That’s why we called you.”

“No boyfriend included in this happy life out in New York?” Logan asks, a little too hopefully.

She shakes her head again. “There’ve been a few guys. Nothing serious. She even got back together with Piz of all people for a little bit. But when he told her he wanted her to meet his parents, she got weirded out and broke it off again.”

He thinks about Carrie. The way he thought he was serious about their relationship, and her passive aggressiveness that she thought he clearly wasn’t. Maybe he’s in denial about still being hung up on Veronica, the same way she apparently is about him.

“Piz?” Logan asks, cringing at the name as he speaks it aloud. “Round two? Seriously?”

“You’re not the only one who was surprised, trust me.”

“What does she see in him?” he asks more to himself than to Mac.

She answers him anyway. “He’s the complete opposite of you.”

He huffs out a breath, thinking about the last time he’d seen that little prick when his fist connected with his jaw. It still makes him angry.

“Yeah well, not everyone is blessed with my charm,” he says sarcastically, drifting his gaze over to the door of the guest room.

Can she hear them talking out here? Does she recognize his voice? She hasn’t come storming out to yell at him for existing yet.

“So, what do you need from me, right now?” he asks. “Wallace said you might need help in convincing her to leave?”

Mac checks over her shoulder again at the closed door. “Maybe I should try first before we drop you in on her. Seeing you might be more emotions than she can handle right now.”

“Does she ever talk about me?” he asks, unable to help himself or quench his curiosity. “Besides in her sleep, that is?”

She sighs. “I feel like there are times when she wants to. But she’ll catch herself and stop and backtrack.”

Logan huffs out another breath, rubbing at the back of his neck. “She and I really fucked each other up, didn’t we?”

“I can’t speak for what she did to you, but I really feel like she lost a part of herself that year and while you’re not entirely to blame you didn’t help.”

How can Mac say that when she had only known her for three years at that point? _He’s_ the one who’s known her since they were 12. Mac didn’t know her like he did. Nobody did. But maybe now that’s changed.

What part of herself had she lost?

_Oh_ , he thinks when it hits him, _The P.I. part. And maybe every ounce of trust she had left_.

“She lost a part of herself when Lilly died too,” Logan says. “And she never got it back.”

“I knew _of_ her back then, but we didn’t exactly speak. She and I have talked about how Lilly’s death changed her though. I just wonder what losing her dad is going to do.”

He knows it’s broken her. Without even having seen her, he knows there’s a certain light in her eyes that’s been permanently extinguished. He knows that even though she has her friends right here and willing to help and be there for her, she feels like she’s completely alone.

Nine years apart be damned, he still knows her far too well.

“So, in your expert Veronica opinion, what do you think she needs?” he asks.

“You mean besides to catch a break?”

He nearly laughs at that, hating that it’s true. She’s been thrown curveballs for years starting with the death of her best friend at 16. And they just haven’t stopped coming ever since.

“Yeah,” Logan agrees. “Besides that.”

“I don’t know, Logan,” Mac sighs. “Someone who’s there for her every step of the way? Someone who believes in her and trusts her and loves every part of her.”

“She doesn’t have that with you and Wallace?”

“Neither of us live in New York, for starters. But no, what she needs, I don’t think we can give her. We’ve got the friendship part covered, don’t get me wrong, but there’s just...something else she’s missing.”

“That part of her that she lost?” he asks with a shrug.

Mac nods slowly. “She thinks she’s happy now. Away from the investigating, off living her future-New-York-City-power-lawyer life. But she’s been sad for a while now and _this_ ,” she pauses and gestures around the room, “is the catalyst that’s going to crack it all open.”

“And what makes Wallace think that the thing that she needs is me?”

She smiles, softening again. “If you didn’t already know the answer to that Logan, you wouldn’t be here.”

* * *

He spots her seated on the other side of the room. She’s dressed in a simple black dress with low black heels. Her hair is pulled back into a tight bun and he wonders if she’s kept it long or cut it short again. She pulls at the black cardigan she wears over her dress, wrapping her arms around her tiny frame as though she’s trying to disappear and hide behind it. He can only see the side profile of her face, but her expression looks cold. That same look she has right before she’s about to yell at someone.

Perhaps this _was_ a bad idea. He definitely doesn’t want to be on the receiving end of that glare. She’s mad at the world right now and he gets that, but he doesn’t want her anger taken out on him. 

But her old “Logan-spidey senses” must be tingling because after he stares at her for a moment too long, she turns and scans the room with her eyes, her gaze settling on to him. Logan gives her a little wave, unsure of what to expect from her. She holds his gaze for what feels like an eternity and he realizes he’s no longer able to read her expressions. Has time taken away that ability? Or is she too numb to the world today to be easily readable? 

Slowly she rises to her feet, batting away Wallace like an old woman refusing the offer of assistance to stand. She’s grieving, not injured or senile. 

For the second time that day he feels his world stop. Veronica walks toward him and everyone and everything else in the room just fades away. It’s only her. Only him. 

_Do you love me?_

_Yeah._

“Veronica,” he speaks her name softly, wondering if the appropriate greeting here would involve a hug. 

He’s thought about this moment dozens of times, maybe more. Running into her again, whether on purpose or by accident. Various scenarios of how this would all play out on a never-ending loop for nine years in the back of his mind. Not a single one of them involved her father’s funeral.

She looks at him as though she’s sizing him up for a moment. Steely blue eyes, rimmed red from crying. Pursed lips. She looks more exhausted than Mac had when she answered the door this morning. He can sense the way the exhaustion has settled in deep and taken hold like an immovable force. A holding pattern until the numbness dies out and the breakdown sets in.

He wants to hold her. Seeing her like this, he’s overcome by the overwhelming need to haul her up against his chest and stroke his fingers through her hair and assure her that everything is going to be okay. 

But they’re not those people anymore. _That couple_. He has no right to waltz right in here and be her knight-in-shining-whatever. So, he stands back, fighting his every urge, and waiting for her to make the first move.

Veronica takes another step toward him and stretches up so she’s speaking directly into his ear. “Get me out of here.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> YOU GUYS! I'm blown away by the initial response to this one, seriously! You're all incredible, thank you so much! I really want to get better at responding individually to comments and I told myself I was going to start with this fic, but here we are chapter two, and I've all done is reread your comments dozens of times and grin at them stupidly...so.
> 
> Someone did ask if I planned to change the POV back and forth between Logan and Veronica. Right now I've only been writing it from Logan's POV and I think it's going to stay that way just because writing from Veronica's POV about this might be too painful for me to handle. But who knows? I might try it on for a later chapter, we'll see. 
> 
> Okay, enough of my rambling, happy reading!

His instinctual reaction is to respond with innuendo, to tease her about propositioning him after all this time and at a time and place like this no less. But he is not a dumb man. There will be no poking of the bear today. 

“Veronica,” he says her name again, unsure of what she wants.

“Logan.”

The way she pleads his name breaks him. His fingers itch with the need to touch her, to comfort her in the way she used to let him.

“Yeah, okay whatever you need,” he tells her.

She slips past him and out the front doors of the church. He has no idea what’s happening here, but he follows after her.

“Want to clue me in on what’s going on right now?” he asks, sidling up next to her as she stares out at the parking lot.

Without a word, she slips her hand into his pants pocket and pulls out his car keys. He thinks perhaps it should faze him for her to do such a thing, but truth be told he has no problem with it. Instead it just reminds him of simpler times – years spent wearing cargo shorts and her nosey-self digging through them as though she was hoping to find a treasure.

Veronica hits the unlock button on his key fob and follows the noise of the beep right over to his BMW convertible. He follows her again, watching in amusement when she slides into the driver seat. He has to bite back his laughter when she adjusts the seat so her feet will actually reach the pedals.

_Not the time for a short joke, Echolls._

Logan slips into the passenger seat when she looks over at him expectantly. Good to know that she’s not simply trying to steal his car here, she actually wants him to accompany her. She puts the key into the ignition and starts the car. He lets her pull out of the parking lot before he presses her again.

“Where are we going?” he asks her.

“Anywhere that’s not here.”

She just hijacked him and his car and is running away from her father’s funeral. He can’t be sure, but he has a feeling this isn’t what Wallace and Mac had in mind when they asked him to come help out with her.

“Veronica,” he tries again, tentatively.

“I just – I need –” she takes a shuddering breath like she’s trying to stop herself from crying. But she stops talking after that, letting them fall into a silence as a radio ad boasts about the low, low prices at the local furniture store.

He gives her the silence. She clearly doesn’t want to discuss this right now and he can’t say that he blames her. Hell, after his mom died, he’d all but forced her to investigate the death – convinced that his mother was still out there somewhere alive.

But he doesn’t know how to be here for her if she won’t talk to him and on top of that, the boundaries that have been set up from their years apart are keeping him from simply holding her like he wants to. Of course, she’s busy driving his car at the moment, so now wouldn’t be the ideal time for him to wrap her up in his arms anyway. So, he gives her the only thing he’s capable of giving her right now, the freedom to drive his car wherever the hell she wants.

He doesn’t question her when she passes their high school, or even when she passes the sign that says that they’re leaving Neptune city limits. But when she ends up on I-5 North, he thinks it’s time he asks again.

“You’re driving north,” he states matter-of-factly.

“So?” she asks, glancing over at him briefly before refocusing on the road.

“New York is east.”

She huffs, mumbling something that he thinks sounds like “New York can go fuck itself,” but he’s not entirely sure. He wonders if she was here when Keith died or if she was still trapped on a plane or at the airport even. That would explain her sudden hostility toward the place where Mac had claimed she finally found happiness.

“Veronica?” he presses again.

“I’m not trying to go anywhere, okay? I’m just driving.”

He glances down at the gas gauge. There’s still half a tank left, but he makes a mental note to keep an eye on that for her, and to start pestering her to stop once they’re down to a quarter left. Doesn’t really seem like an ideal day to get stranded on the interstate. At least it’s not raining yet.

He has so many things he wants to ask her. How long have you been in town? Were you with him when it happened? Why do you want to miss his funeral? What are we doing? How long do you intend to keep driving? Are you done being mad at me?

But none of them seem like something she wants to answer right now. He’s just along for the ride, mindlessly flipping through radio stations she seems to have no interest in.

“If it starts raining, I can put the top up,” he tells her instead.

She nods once, her fingers tightening their grip on the wheel before releasing the tension.

He wants to ask if she really wants him here with her or if she just wanted the use and escape route of his car. But she sought him out. Found him in that crowd of people and pleaded with him to take her away from all of it. Does she know he still can’t say no to her?

“Why me?” Logan asks, turning to stare at her side profile. He can see the extra years etched into her features. No longer the young girl he knew through all of their teen years, but a young woman he now feels he knows nothing about.

“Why you, what?”

“Why am I your getaway car?”

She taps her thumbs against the steering wheel. “I knew you wouldn’t question it. Me wanting to leave.” Another slow, shuddering breath.

“After all this time, you still think that I understand you better than your friends do?”

“I think I’ve already proven that you do.”

“How do you figure?”

A tiny lift of her shoulders in a shrug. “You came along didn’t you? No questions asked.”

“I’ve asked you several times where we’re going,” he counters.

“A reasonable request. One that I answered.”

He changes the radio station again when an ad comes on. Classical music swells back at him.

“And you know what _not_ to ask,” Veronica adds, her voice sounding small and soft.

She’s right. He does know her like this. Her friends know her in her light, but he’s been privy to her darkness.

“You could let them in you know,” he tells her.

She shakes her head, more little wisps of her hair escaping her tight bun in the wind. “They’ve become overprotective enough. They don’t need to know everything else.”

“But I get to?”

“The way I see it you and I…we’re carved from the same stone.”

“The same darkness,” he supplies.

She gives him a quick glance in his direction. “Yeah, like that.”

“You don’t think Wallace and Mac can handle all of the skeletons in your closet?”

She hums, seeming to mull over his question. As far as he knows, he’s still the sole keeper of many of her secrets. He’s never expected it to last that way forever. She was bound to meet someone someday who would want to know all of her, and she would let them. But thinking about someone else knowing all of her the way he does? It makes his blood boil. Just a little.

“What _I_ think,” Veronica starts, “is that they called you to make sure that I would show up to the funeral.”

“V –”

“Am I wrong?”

Logan sighs. “No.”

“If I had told either one of them I was running, they wouldn’t let me. You get it. They don’t.”

“They care about you, Veronica.”

“I know. I know. But if I had to listen to them ask me one more time how am I doing I was going to lose it. I can’t take it. The pitying looks, the walking around on eggshells _and_ with kid gloves. I’m just – I’m trying so hard not to think about it and everything they do makes me think about it even more.”

He thumbs the button on the radio again. An old Kansas song filtering through the speakers.

_I close my eyes_

_Only for a moment, and the moment's gone_

_All my dreams_

_Pass before my eyes, a curiosity_

“How’s law school?” Logan asks.

“What?”

“Law school,” he repeats. “You know that fancy group of buildings in New York with professors teaching you how to be a lawyer in exchange for a ridiculous amount of money.”

Another side-eyed glance from Veronica.

“You don’t want to think about what we’ve started talking about so I’m changing the subject. Tell me about law school.”

And there it is. For the first time in nine years he sees her smile. Not an image in a photograph or a memory behind his eyelids, but the real genuine thing. Small though this one may be, it’s just as radiant as he remembers it.

“I think competitive is a good word to describe it,” she tells him.

“Ah so just how you like it.”

Another small smile, the gleam of a challenge in her eyes. “It suits me, yes. The post-graduation job-hunt process has been just as fun.”

“If you need a client reference, send them my way. You’ve cleared my name on more than one occasion and that was pre-fancy-degree.”

That almost gets her to laugh, but it’s as though she’s trying to fight it. Circumstances too somber to let it out? Their relationship status still too precarious to allow it?

“I’ll be sure to add you to my references,” she says.

“Need my phone number for that?”

“Has it changed?”

“Nope.”

“Then I still have it.”

He has to bite back the snark settling on the tip of his tongue.

_Oh really? I wasn’t sure seeing as how you haven’t used it for almost a decade._

It’s not the time to pick a fight with her, especially not this particular fight. It’s not like he’s tried to call her either. He didn’t dare. She’d made it pretty damn well clear that he’d fucked up for the last time. She was done with him.

But then why did she still call out his name in her sleep? Why was he invited to be here with her now?

“You’re not the one who keeps calling me and then immediately hanging up are you?” Logan asks jokingly.

“Oh, so you _did_ delete my number,” she says quietly.

What? Oh, caller ID. He would know it was her calling if her number was still in his phone. Which it is. He couldn’t bring himself to get rid of it.

“Poorly thought out joke,” he tells her. “Your number is right where it’s always been.”

She nods once, keeping her gaze trained forward and he gets that old familiar feeling in his gut again. The one where he feels like he messed up, let her down, disappointed her. He thought for sure he’d be immune to that at this point.

“Veronica?”

“I know this is weird,” she says in a rush. “And I know you don’t understand this. _I_ don’t understand this. But I needed – and then I saw you and I just – do you remember Lilly’s funeral?”

“Barely. I was...pretty wasted.”

“Do you remember dragging me down to the beach during the reception? Acting like – well a drunk idiot – just trying to get me to smile?”

Now that she mentions it, he does remember. Those last fleeting moments of their friendship before everything went to hell.

“Yeah, I remember.”

“I think that’s what this is. My brain took that memory and ran with it.”

She doesn’t know what to make of the two of them either. Two lost souls trapped together again by tragedy. The ex-quarreling lovers who time may or may not have healed.

“What can I do?” he asks. “Talk to you more about law school? Your life in New York? Channel my inner drunken idiot?”

Another tiny lift at the corners of her lips. “How have you been?”

There is so much she doesn’t know. So much that would only hurt her more in a time when she’s looking for any type of escape from the already pulsating pain.

“Okay, I guess,” he answers her.

“That sounded reassuring.”

“Honestly? I’ve been better. But then again, I’ve been worse,” Logan sighs. “Hence the ‘okay, I guess.’”

She goes quiet again and he reaches forward to change the radio station. A country song with major pop vibes comes on.

_I knew you were trouble when you walked in_

_So shame on me now_

_Flew me to places I’d never been_

_Now I’m lyin’ on the cold hard ground_

“I was hoping you’d be…” she starts, trailing off for a moment. “Happy. That’s all I’ve ever wanted for you.”

God, she still does things to him. The way _all he wants_ is to hold her in his arms even it’s just for one last final time. Closure. That’s what he needs. What they both do. Maybe then they can both finally move on. Unless...

“Are you?” he asks. “Despite –”

That sideways glance begging him not to say it, to speak the words out loud.

“Despite the recent situation,” he offers instead. “Are you happy?”

Mac had told him that Veronica thought she was happy, even though Mac could clearly see that she wasn’t. He wonders what she’ll admit to him now.

The country-pop song on the radio reaches its bridge.

_And the saddest fear_

_Comes creepin’ in_

_That you never loved me_

_Or her_

_Or anyone_

_Or anything_

“I thought I was. Top of my class at Columbia, a handful of powerful firms offering interviews, living so far away from this place I’d forgotten how the ocean breeze feels on my skin.”

“Homesick?” he asks her.

“I’ve been running for so long, I’ve forgotten what it was that I was running from. And now…”

“Were you here when –”

“Don’t,” she cuts him off sharply, giving him all the answer that he needs.

She didn’t make it home in time. She wasn’t here. She didn’t get to say her goodbyes.

“All I’ve ever wanted is for you to be happy too, Veronica.”

She shakes her head. “I guess I don’t get to be. The moment that I think I am, every single time, something comes along and fucks it all up.”

“Man, do I know that feeling,” Logan mutters.

“Same darkness stone.”

“You think we’re stuck like this forever?” he asks. “Two broken individuals unable to be fixed?”

“You do a shit job of cheering somebody up, you know that?”

“We’ll start discussing puppies within the next 90 seconds. Now answer my question.”

“Fuck, I don’t know, Logan. I moved to the other side of the country and I still had someone bring up my not even a sex tape – sex tape in a job interview. I wouldn’t be surprised if my next one brought up Lilly or Aaron.” She shakes her head again, glancing behind her as she changes lanes. “I can’t outrun my past or escape it and I feel like as long as it’s a major part of me, I’m going to continue to feel broken.”

“You don’t ever think that there might be something or someone out there to make you feel whole again?”

She opens her mouth to respond but decides against it and closes her parted lips with another shake of her head.

What if she thinks _he_ would make her whole again, but she’s too afraid they’ve messed things up too badly to ever recover from it?

“Okay, it’s been 90 seconds. I was promised puppies.”

“Would a puppy complete you?” he asks, only half teasing.

“It would help to fill the Backup-sized hole in my heart.”

“That’s a pretty big hole.”

She nods in agreement.

“Can’t even begin to imagine the size of the one I left,” Logan jokes.

_Fuck, fuck, fuck, you idiot, fuck._

“Shit, I shouldn’t have –” he tries to backtrack. “I didn’t mean to imply – shit, I’m sorry. Forget I said that.”

Her right hand releases the steering wheel and she reaches over to pat his shoulder. “I got the joke, Logan. Relax.”

He looks over at her as she returns her right hand to the wheel. She’s smiling again.

“Channeling your inner drunken idiot is going well for you,” she says with a smirk.

“Hey now, wait a second,” he starts to protest.

She keeps smiling as they drive past the exit for Carlsbad. They’re about 45 minutes north of Neptune at this point. And she seems to have no intention of turning back around any time soon.

“Should I be concerned that no one has tried to call you since we left?” Logan asks.

“I left my phone at the church.”

“Or me?” he asks, unlocking his phone to find no new notifications.

“Either they assumed you chickened out and never showed up or they know we’re together.”

“First of all, they knew I was coming. And secondly, if you left your phone behind, it sort of looks like I kidnapped you.”

“I’m the one who did the kidnapping here.”

“Veronica.”

“Call them if you want. Tell them we went for a drive. Tell them I don’t want to talk to them about this, but if they know of any good pitbulls up for adoption –”

“Veronica.”

“Why do you keep saying my name like that?”

“Like what?”

“Like my dad would when he knew I wasn’t telling him the whole truth about something.”

Despite the top of the convertible still being rolled down, it feels like all of the air has just been sucked out of the car. Her breathing is labored and he has half the mind to tell her to pull over before she completely breaks down. But she seems to shake it off, wiping at her eyes with the back of her right hand before tightening her grip on the steering wheel as though it’s keeping both her _and_ the car steady.

“Are you even allowed to have a pitbull in New York City?”

“Who says I’m staying out there?” she asks, wiping at her eyes again. “Maybe I want to move back to California or to a new state.”

“Do you?”

Logan pulls a napkin out of the glove compartment and passes it to her. She gives him a small smile when she takes it from him, dabbing it under her eyes before blowing her nose. She holds it wadded up in her right hand, not sure what else to do with it.

“Just put it in the cup holder. It’s fine,” Logan tells her.

She nods and releases it, tugging the sleeve of her cardigan down over her hand before regripping the wheel.

“So, do you?” Logan asks again. “Do you want to move somewhere else?”

“The only two things I know right now are that I miss having a dog and that we’re not far enough away from Neptune yet.”

His heart breaks for her. He wants to do anything and everything in his power to make her feel okay again, to make her feel _whole_ again.

“Then by all means,” he starts. “Keep driving.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Still grinning from ear to ear at your responses, you guys. I appreciate you all so much.

Around 20 minutes later, Logan gets her to stop for gas somewhere in San Clemente. There’s a donut and coffee shop across the street, and he convinces her to check it out before hitting the road again. She tries to tell him that she’ll just wait in the car, but he bribes her inside by threatening to get her coffee order wrong, even though he still has it memorized. She slinks into the shop behind him, pulling her cardigan tighter around her torso as though it’s some sort of shield.

He orders them coffee and she shoots him a look that screams ‘if you still remember, why did you need me for this?’

“You hungry?” he asks, ignoring her glare and gesturing to the large display case of donuts.

If all she’s eaten today is some toast, she should be. But she shakes her head, averting her gaze to the floor. He orders a half dozen anyway, selecting some he knows she won’t be able to resist later. The smell will get to her. It’s how he always seems to end up sharing his food with her.

Veronica starts to head back to his car once he’s paid, but he stops her, parking himself at one of the picnic tables outside of the coffee shop.

“Nu-uh, no coffee not in a tightly sealed travel mug in the BMW,” he tells her, flipping open the lid on the donut box.

She stares at him, halfway between the car and the picnic bench. He sees the flicker of a fight in her eyes, a protest poised to strike. He stares back, welcoming her to challenge him as he bites into the giant bear claw he selected from the donut box. She crosses her arms over her chest, continuing to glare. He lifts up her coffee cup and waves it at her. Finally, she huffs and crosses back over to the picnic table, taking a seat across from him.

Logan passes her the coffee and turns the box of donuts so the chocolate ones are directly in her line of vision. She holds the paper cup between her hands, like she’s trying to let the hot liquid chase away the chill that’s seeped into her bones. It won’t be that easy, he knows. Coffee can’t fix this type of pain. Neither can alcohol, for that matter.

“If you get a new dog, what would you name it?” he asks, venturing into the conversation territory she has already deemed safe.

“I’d have to see the dog first,” she says, her gaze wandering over to the double chocolate donut immediately to her left.

“Care if it’s a boy or a girl?”

She shakes her head, caving and reaching into the donut box. Good. Even if it’s just sugar on sugar, at least she’s eating _something_.

“Is your heart completely set on a pitbull?” he asks.

“No, but it has to be a big dog. The little ones are too yappy.”

He’s not sure how much longer he can stay on this topic. But the things he really wants to ask her, the things he really wants to know, will clam her right back up and she’ll stop talking again. What else is safe? Law school, dogs, coffee…

“I saw you on a tabloid a few weeks ago,” she offers softly, lifting the coffee cup up to her lips.

All right, interesting topic choice.

“Oh yeah? What are they accusing me of this time?”

“The usual,” she says with a lift of her shoulders. “Being the poster boy for rage.”

He groans inwardly. That would be from the last time he’d spoken with Carrie. She’d lost her sobriety, got into a yelling match with some guy, and he’d only been trying to break it up. Context would do wonders for these tabloid journalists. 

“It’s not what it sounds like,” he tells her.

“I know.”

“You do?”

She nods around a bite of her donut. “You don’t get mad like that unless you’re defending someone you care about. So, how long have you and Carrie been together? That was her name, right? In high school?”

The number of fights he’d gotten into just to make people pay for hurting _her_. Mercer, Piz, Gory. Hell, he’d have gone after Beaver too if he hadn’t been holding a gun that night. He’s long since gotten that part of himself under control in his late twenties, but that night at Carrie’s had been a unique exception.

“About a year and a half. But I’m pretty sure it’s been over since that night the tabloids so kindly covered for us.”

“Not a fan of The Hulk?”

He thinks he should be offended by that, but with the way she’s smirking at him…she’s a lovable jerk.

“There was more to it than that, but,” he pauses, shakes his head against the memory. “Seriously? This is what you want to get into right now?”

“Just testing the waters,” she says with a shrug. “Your girlfriend probably wouldn’t be too happy to hear about you running off with your ex.”

“Well lucky for you, I don’t currently have one.”

She nods, reaching for a napkin to wipe the melted chocolate off her fingers. He already knows the answer, but he has to ask anyway. Can’t let on that Mac was spilling all of her secrets.

“What about you? Your boyfriend won’t be mad about running away with your ex?”

“No boyfriend,” she tells him.

“I should have known. If you had one, you’d make _him_ take this road trip with you.”

She shakes her head. “Nope.”

“No?”

“I doubt he’d understand. What are the odds of me finding another guy who understands me like you do?”

If she keeps saying things like that, he can’t be held responsible for any physical contact he tries to initiate later.

“So, you’d ditch the boyfriend and drag me along anyway?”

She nods, eyeing the box of donuts for a second one. She picks up a classic glazed and surprises him by reaching across the table to touch his hand with her free one.

“I’m sorry about The Hulk comment, by the way. Poor attempt at humor.”

She doesn’t meet his eyes when she speaks. Her gaze is instead focused down on their hands, her thumb gently brushing back and forth over the back of his hand.

“It’s okay,” he tells her. “I knew it wasn’t a jab.”

What are they doing? Not with the ditching of Keith’s funeral and driving to who-knows-where, but with _them_? She’s just touching his hand, but he wants so much more. Nothing sexual, at least not today, just to hold her against him, feel her weight, inhale the familiar scent of her shampoo.

“It’s her loss, you know?” Veronica says quietly.

A part of him can’t help but wonder if this is the grief talking. She’s hurting and seeking old familiar comforts. But he can’t forget what Mac told him. The calling out his name in her sleep, the willingness to give up everything if he simply asked her to.

“Is that from personal experience?” he asks, nearly holding his breath after he speaks it.

She smiles at him, but doesn’t say more, chewing on her most recent bite of her donut.

“I’ve missed you too, Veronica.”

* * *

He talks her into letting him drive for a while, after swearing he wouldn’t turn them around and drive home. He pulls them back out onto I-5 N, their remaining three donuts still in the box on the floor of the backseat.

“Do you still surf?” she asks him.

“Every chance I get,” Logan answers honestly.

“We’ll never get you away from California, huh?”

He laughs. “You might be able to steal me away to Hawaii. Or Australia even.”

“And risk running into Duncan?”

“Oh, is that where he ran off to?”

“In theory.”

“All right, Bonnie. Tell Clyde hello the next time you talk to him.”

She laughs at that and the sound does things to his insides. He hadn’t realized just how much he’d missed that sound.

“I haven’t spoken to him since I helped him leave,” she explains. “Trying not to get charged with aiding and abetting over here.”

“I bet you know plenty of good lawyers if you did. Hell, you could even represent yourself.”

“Ah yes, using my expensive law degree to keep myself out of jail. Dad would be so proud.”

Oh shit, are they doing this now? Is she ready for this conversation?

“He was always proud of you.”

“Oh yeah, him finding out in the middle of a murder trial that I had an STD or me ruining his chance of re-election by having a no sex, sex-tape start circulating? A lot to be proud of there.”

“Neither of those things were your fault.”

“Forget it,” she sighs, slumping down in the passenger seat.

“Veronica, he knew –”

“Just drop it, Logan.”

He lets it go, gives her the space to change the subject. Instead he reaches out to change the radio station away from the current advertisement for toothpaste.

_You know there will be days when you're so tired that you can't take another step_

_The night will have no stars and you'll think you've gone as far as you will ever get_

_But you and me walk on, walk on, walk on_

_Cause you can't go back now_

“Do you ever think about the what ifs in life?” she asks.

“The what ifs?”

“Yeah, you know. What if we hadn’t lost Lilly? What if we never broke up in college?”

He laughs a little at that, rubbing at the back of his neck. “Oh yeah, all the time.”

“Is there ever a scenario where we end up happy?”

“Happy together or just happy in general?”

She looks over at him. Even with his gaze trained on the road, he can feel her studying him, taking in his appearance, memorizing what’s changed vs. what’s stayed the same.

“Is there a difference?”

Her response is whisper quiet and he has to tighten his grip on the wheel to keep the car from swerving. She can’t just say things like that and expect him not to react. She knows what she used to…what she _still_ …means to him. _She knows_.

Doesn’t she?

“Veronica –”

“Forget it.”

He can’t. He won’t.

“I thought you were happy out in New York,” he says.

“I was. For a while.”

“What happened?”

She takes a moment to respond, staring out at the landscape as they speed past before turning back to look at him. “We’re at the age where friends are starting to get engaged and get married and have kids. And while I’ve never felt like that was something that I wanted for myself, at least not since I was like 14, it just…I don’t know, it makes you think. I spent the summer going to wedding after wedding for my law school friends. And it just sort of hit me that I’m never going to have that.”

“Have what? A wedding?”

She shakes her head. “No, just…that kind of relationship with someone.”

“Come on now, don’t say that. You’re too young to start throwing I’m going to be alone forever pity parties.”

“I’m terrified of relationships. Of commitment. Piz wanted me to meet his parents and I got so freaked out at the idea that I broke up with him. Who does that?”

“To be fair, he wasn’t right for you anyway.”

“Oh, so you’re the expert on what’s right for me now, huh?”

“You said it yourself, nobody knows you better than I do.”

She goes quiet again, the radio softly filling the silence.

_Two AM and she calls me 'cause I'm still awake,_

_Can you help me unravel my latest mistake,_

_I don't love him, winter just wasn't my season_

“What are you so afraid of?” Logan asks. “With relationships? And if you say getting hurt, I’m going to be forced to use some cheesy quote like don’t let the fear of striking out keep you from playing the game.”

“Who said that?” she asks, and he can see the smirk on her lips, the memory of his old affinity for voicemail quotes.

“Babe Ruth.”

She hums, tugging the sleeves of her cardigan down over her hands. “I’ve been in love twice, both times before I was even 20.”

Duncan. Him.

_Do you love me?_

_Yeah._

“And I can’t help but wonder if I even knew what love was back then. Was I old enough to get it? Mature enough? Have I been holding on to these ideas of what I think love is supposed to be like for all these years and they’re not even realistic? But I did love Duncan. And I did love you. That much I do know. And I have yet to find anyone else who makes me feel that way. I’m 28. Closer to my 30s than my teen years. But I’m alone. And now without…it’s just me. My entire family it’s just – _fuck_.”

He’s already eyeing the shoulder for a good place to pull over. She’s about to lose it and he’ll be damned if he’s still trying to focus on the road and driving when she does.

“It wasn’t supposed to end up like this,” she keeps talking, the sound of imminent tears creeping into her voice. “I let school and my career and my pursuit of a better life outside of Neptune dictate my 20s. And now what? Was a law degree supposed to bring me happiness? Was I supposed to fall in love again out in New York? Was I supposed to have never left Neptune so I could have fucking been there to call an ambulance when my dad stopped breathing?”

God damnit why is the car in the lane next to the shoulder driving so slow? He needs to pull over and he needs to do it _now._

She’s hyperventilating, tugging on the sleeves of her cardigan with so much force he thinks she’s going to rip the fabric.

“Veronica, I need you to breathe.”

His own voice is hoarse, tears of his own – for her, for Keith – forming thick in his throat.

She’s not, she’s not, she’s panicking. Oh for the love of god will this car just _move_?

“Veronica, I need you to listen to me, okay? Try and take long deep breaths, okay? You can do this.”

She’s still not doing it. Her breathing is still choppy and she’s pulling on that cardigan like it’s her damn lifeline.

Logan, fed up with the slow car, accelerates much faster than was probably necessary to get in front of it and pulls off onto the shoulder of the road. He eases down on the brake as quickly as he can without jerking the car abruptly to a stop. He throws it into park as soon as he’s able to, tossing off his seatbelt, and reaching for hers across the center console. He pushes back the driver’s seat so there’s more room in front of the steering wheel and somehow coaxes her over the console and into his lap. She clings to him as though he’s now her lifeline cardigan.

“It’s okay, you’re okay, breathe,” he tries to soothe her, rubbing his hands up and down her back. “You’re not alone, Veronica, I promise you you’re not. You have Mac and Wallace. And me. I’m here. I’m here, you’re okay.”

She breaks down in his arms on the side of the interstate. Her breaking, breaks him. He’s crying too now, murmuring to her over and over again that she’s not alone.

He thinks about when his mother died. When he’d been convinced she had faked her death and was bumming it out holed up in a hotel somewhere. When it had been his sister at the hotel instead and he’d lost it. When Veronica had held him in that hotel lobby for 20 minutes straight, no questions asked.

He’ll return the favor now. He’ll do anything he can to help her through this.

By now, she’s managed to get her breathing back under control. Her face is still buried against the lapels of his suit coat and her hands are still fisted into the fabric at his back. He keeps stroking his fingers up and down her spine, pausing every now and then to rub small circles into her lower back. He remembers how much she used to like it when he did this. His fingers dancing over her bare skin as she fell asleep curled up next to him in his bed.

She’s so much more to him than an afterthought in a parking garage or in an Italian restaurant. He knew he missed her, but _this_? Holding her, comforting her, still being that one person who knows her best? Still being the last person she was in love with? It makes everything come rushing back. The way he’s really truly missed her. The way his year and a half with Carrie was always going to be overshadowed by his second love, by Veronica.

He has even more questions for her now. About second chances, or well third chances he guesses, and nine years apart that left them still, after all this time, seemingly only wanting each other. She sought him out for a reason. Trusts him with all of this, with her. She broke up with him over a trust issue and yet he’s the only one she wants to see her like this.

What else happened in New York? What did Piz do, or didn’t do, to leave her feeling like this? How many other guys had there been? What was wrong with them? Did they hurt her? Did she hurt them?

He feels her loosen her grip on the back of his suit jacket. He doesn’t want her pulling away from him yet and retreating back to the passenger seat. He’s not ready. But her arms only readjust their position and she’s still clinging to him like a koala. Logan exhales a sigh of relief and presses his lips to the crown of her head without thinking about it. The gesture, thankfully, doesn’t scare her off and she remains seated in his lap.

“You ready to talk about it?” he asks quietly.

She takes a shuddering breath. “No.”

“Do you want to head home?”

“No.”

He hums, tracing the path of her spine with his fingertips again. “Do you want another donut?”

She makes a sound that seems like a cross between a laugh and a hiccup and presses herself closer against him.

“Well then, what do you want?” he asks, reaching up with one hand to brush back the hairs the wind has pulled out of her bun off of her face.

“To go back in time and change things.”

“I left my time travel machine in my other suit I’m afraid.”

She sighs, starting to shift away from him and he’s already cursing at the loss of her touch. She sits up straight in his lap, her arms already back to trying to pull that damn cardigan around herself tighter. 

“I can stay on I-5 or I can switch over to I-405,” Logan tells her. “Do you have a preference?”

Veronica shakes her head.

“Running isn’t going to bring him back,” he says gently.

“Nothing will.”

“So, what are you hoping to find out here?”

She shrugs, looking down at her hands and picking at one of her cuticles. “Myself.”

“You’d think you’d have better luck finding her back in New York? Or in Neptune?”

She shakes her head.

“Are you thinking you left her in Stanford? Because that is a long ass drive, I’m not necessarily prepared to take right now.”

She looks up at him, the expression on her face threatening to break him all over again. “I think I left her with you.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Sunday (or Monday because time zones) friends! I've started to create a playlist for all of the "radio" songs used in this story. I'll post a link once I figure out how I want to go about doing that. lol 
> 
> Thank you again for all your kind words, I'm so glad everyone enjoyed the last line from last chapter! Let's pick right back up where we left off, shall we?

She left herself with him? What does that even mean? He thinks back to what Mac had told him this morning.

_She lost a part of herself that year and while you’re not entirely to blame you didn’t help._

She hasn’t felt like herself since she broke up with him? For nine years she’s felt like she’s been living somebody else’s life?

“I never asked to be your keeper.”

It’s the wrong thing to say and he knows it. As soon as the words are out there hanging in the air he wishes he could take them back.

Veronica tugs at her cardigan again, crawling back over into the passenger seat and he silently curses that she’s no longer curled up against him.

“Take 405,” she tells him, reaching back for her seat belt and clicking it back into place.

“You can’t blame me for hating the way your life turned out,” he tells her, making no move to readjust the driver’s seat or his seatbelt.

The words are harsher than he intended them to be. He’s still used to going on the defensive with her, remnants from her previous constant accusations toward the end of things. Sometimes he wonders how they were ever meant to work at all when all they could manage to do was fight and blame each other. But _he knows_ they had good moments too. Ones that made everything worthwhile. Ones that allowed him not to even question her impromptu road trip today.

Veronica huffs, crossing her arms over her chest. “I don’t blame you, Logan. I blame myself.”

“So, then what is all of this? If you wanted to get me alone to talk –”

“This has nothing to do with that,” she groans, pressing the heels of her hands against her eyes.

“Look, I know you’re dealing with a lot right now and I get that you don’t want to talk about it. I respect that. We don’t have to talk about your father, but we _do_ have to talk about this.”

She drops her hands and looks back over at him, that same vulnerable expression written all over her face. “I know people grow up. I know that who you are at 18 isn’t who you’re going to be for the rest of your life. But I haven’t felt like myself in years. And maybe it’s because I dropped the PI life and the FBI dream and I’m trying to become this corporate New York lawyer I don’t even recognize.”

“What does all of that have to do with me? I just you wanted you to be safe, Veronica. I never told you to go to law school.”

“Because if I close my eyes and try to find a happy memory to hang on to, to keep me afloat – one not involving Lilly or my dad because those just make me even sadder now – I think of you. Of nights twisted up in bedsheets and each other. Of lazy Sunday afternoons and summer nights on the beach under the stars. So, yeah, yes I asked you to take me away from today because you understand me and I knew you wouldn’t think I was crazy for wanting to run. But also? When I saw you standing there, I thought that maybe I could use this to remember what it felt like to be my old self again. I liked her. Who I am now?” She shakes her head, drawing her knees up into her chest, her feet on the edge of the car seat. “The old Veronica never would have let her father, her one constant in her life, die all alone.”

Fuck, fuck, fuck. They couldn’t have had this conversation somewhere else besides his car on the side of the road? He needs her back in his arms. He needs her to understand that she’s not a bad person and that she’s loved and she’s not alone. And she looks so small sitting there in that black dress all curled up into a ball like that.

When his drunken ass had dragged her down to the beach after Lilly’s funeral, she’d done that then too. Curled in on herself, all dressed in black, like she was trying to disappear. He’d coaxed her out of it. Gotten her to smile. Gotten her to laugh. She’d leaned into his side while he told her crazy stories about dumbass things he and Dick had done together.

How is he supposed to do that now? How is he supposed to give her back her sense of normalcy? She doesn’t get to go home with her family after this one. She has no family left. She has her friends, but Mac had basically told him that she and Wallace weren’t enough anymore.

_She needs him._

And she’s done everything to tell him except come right out and say it.

And she’s shouldering the entire blame alone. She’s always been too hard on herself. A perfectionist through and through. But blaming herself for _this_? And for the end of them, when they had both done some shitty things which ultimately resulted in their demise…he’s not going to let her. He’ll be her knight-and-shining-whatever. He will get her to see that her adult self doesn’t have to be so different from the girl she thinks she’s lost forever. He’ll get her to see that none of this is on her, none of it is her fault.

He can’t bring back Keith, but he can be the one who loves her. If she needs him, she has him. He’s hers.

Logan crawls onto the driver’s seat onto his knees, reaching across the center console to rub her upper back. He can feel the tension knotted into her shoulders and starts to work on massaging it out.

“I may not have asked for it,” he starts, sweeping his thumb across the base of her neck. “But I need you to know I’ve kept her safe these past nine years. I know where to find her and I can return her to you.”

She starts to unfurl herself from the ball, looking over at him while he keeps kneading the tension out of her shoulders. “I knew I could trust you.”

“Always.”

* * *

He takes 405 per her request. He still has no idea where they’re going, but neither does she. He’s just driving for the sake of driving at this point. Running away from her present to try and find her past in a part of the state where she’s never even lived. No one said their choices here made sense.

They’re about an hour and a half away from L.A. at this point. Does he try and take her there? Replace one huge city with another? Try and find his childhood home for a round of I see your current trauma and raise you whatever pre-Neptune memory of Aaron that pops into his head?

He’s about to mentally veto L.A. when he thinks about his parents’ old beach house in Malibu. Correction. _His_ beach house in Malibu. He’d inherited it after Aaron died, not even realizing his father had still owned the property. He’d been tempted to move out there and out of The Grand after his death, but he chose to stay in Neptune with Veronica. Chose to go to college instead of falling into whatever cliché rich orphans with fancy houses and no real-life skills fall into. He’s been renting the beach house out to various tenants over the years instead. And if he remembers correctly, the last tenant was poised to move out last month and the new one wasn’t due to move in for a few more weeks. 

Malibu it is then. Unless she asks him to stop before they get there. But it makes him feel better to at least have a destination in mind.

She’s been quiet since they pulled back out into traffic, staring numbly at the passing landscapes and cars. He knows how dangerous getting trapped in your own thoughts can be, especially when she’s feeling the way she does right now. He should try and get her talking again, but about what? Most of the questions he still wants to ask are ones he knows she’s still not willing to answer. But there has to be something…

“You said Piz wanted you to meet his parents? How long did you guys stay together after our freshmen year at Hearst?”

_Real smooth, Echolls. This will go over well._

“We didn’t,” she answers, without looking over at him. “I went to my FBI internship and then transferred to Stanford. He was so…unbothered by our half naked escapades getting leaked everywhere and that bothered me. I ended it before I left.”

“So then?”

“Our paths crossed again in New York. And he was…familiar.”

“A little piece of home?”

“Yeah, I guess. But he was still the same guy I broke up with when I was 19.”

“So am I.”

He feels her eyes on him then. Hears the way she sighs and shifts in her seat.

“Yeah, but…you’re you.”

“And that gives me a free pass?”

“I never loved him. When you used to tell me that you loved me and I could never manage to say it back, I knew I felt it even though I couldn’t say it. And I think you knew that too. At least I hope you did. But when Piz started saying it, there was nothing there for me. And then he wanted me to meet his parents and I thought, oh god he thinks this is serious. Churches and white dresses and three kids in three years kind of serious. So, I ran. Ended it.”

“Churches? Three kids in three years? Does he not know you at all?”

She snorts and when he glances over at her, she’s tugging on her cardigan again. “It’s like he knew who he wanted me to be and he could never figure out that’s not actually I who I was, who I am.”

“I knew I never liked that guy,” Logan mutters.

He thinks he hears her laugh at that. Quietly, but it’s there.

“Okay, your turn.”

“My turn to what?” he asks. “Complain about Piz? Oh, where to start?”

“No,” she’s shaking her head in his peripheral vision. “Tell me about you and Carrie. How did that happen?”

He shrugs. “It just sort of…did.”

“So, what? You tripped and fell into a relationship with her? This former classmate of ours turned pop star?”

“We don’t need to talk about Carrie.”

“But we needed to talk about Piz?”

Maybe if he just goes quiet and refuses to answer the question, she’ll drop it.

_Yeah right, you have met Veronica Mars, haven’t you?_

“Were you in love with her?”

Her voice is quiet, small, when she asks. This is getting into things he’d rather not when he can’t gauge her reaction by looking at her face. He wants these serious conversations to exist in a space where he can focus on her and not the road.

“I thought I was,” he tells her.

“I can just _hear_ that but hanging in the air there.”

“ _But_ she always seemed convinced that I only had one foot in our relationship, like I would leave if the right opportunity presented itself. The first year we were together things were good, but then our relationship morphed more into me being her sponsor and her thinking I wasn’t fully committed.”

“Were you?” she asks. “Fully committed?”

He sinks back against the headrest, stretching his neck from side to side. “I thought I was.”

“Logan, what –”

“When I was with her, that whole time, I thought I was fully in it. I thought I loved her. And maybe I actually did but – since things ended, I’ve been questioning things. Trying to see everything from her point of view. And maybe I never fully opened up to her. Maybe one too many things reminded me of my ex, and I’d space off thinking about her instead. Maybe I was with her because she needed me, and it was nice to feel needed for a change.”

Veronica sighs. “Are you going to make me say it?”

“Say what, exactly?”

Her gaze is focused on him. “ _I_ need you.”

He feels it all fade away for a moment. Hears only the sound of the radio for a few bars of music.

_Tell me you love me_

_Come back and haunt me_

_Oh, and I rush to the start_

_Running in circles, chasing our tails_

_Coming back as we are_

He has to bite his tongue to stop the snarky retorts from spilling out.

_That must have been hard to admit. Veronica Mars actually needing someone?_

She’s being completely vulnerable with him here. Letting him in, in a way that was always so rare in her constant guarded form.

She’s _trying_.

“You need me?” he asks instead, hating that all he can do is dumbly parrot her back.

“I always have.”

The way she confided in him and only him about Shelly’s party. The way she clung to him when she thought Keith was dead on graduation night. The way when she’d fall asleep next to him some part of her body always had to be touching his.

The way he’s here with her now.

“We’re doing this now?” he asks. “We’re talking about us?”

“I don’t know, I just – I need you to know that even with how things ended between us, I never stopped caring about you.”

“Well you did leave a part of yourself with me so –”

“Logan –”

“No, not how I meant that to sound,” he backtracks. “You said you started dating Piz again because he was familiar, because he was a part of your past, a part of your home. Do you think maybe you’re clinging to this…idea of us for the same reasons?”

She’s quiet, the radio ad boasting some new diet pill. She turns to look at him again and he can feel the way she’s once again analyzing his every feature.

“You used to make me feel safe,” she says so softly he barely hears her over the radio. “You and my dad. You’re what I have left, Logan. And maybe I’m stuck chasing some stupid perfect fantasy lodged in my head, but…I need you right now. I need you to help me feel like myself again. And I know that’s asking a lot. I know we haven’t spoken or messaged or anything for nine years. I know I fucked up. I know I hurt you. But I think if you were still really holding a grudge about all of that, you wouldn’t have come with me today.”

Okay wow, they’re doing this right now. Would she be upset if he pulled over again?

“You got the part about me not being all in with Carrie because I was still hung up on my ex, right? And that ex being you?”

“I picked up on that, yeah.”

Logan scrubs a hand through his hair, glancing over at her. He’s itching just to feel her weight against him again. She has to be hungry by now, right? Some toast and two donuts are not enough to keep her full at this time of the day. If they could just stop somewhere so they could have this discussion without the distraction of driving…

“So, what we’ve concluded here is that our recent relationships keep failing because we’re both hung up on the what-could-have-beens between us?” he asks.

“More or less.”

“And our current, spur of the moment plan here is to run away from home and our lives for the day maybe for the weekend, the time frame really hasn’t been discussed yet, trying to find some long-forgotten happiness?”

“I told you, my only real plan here was to not be at that funeral. Hoping to rediscover the part of myself that I’ve lost with you was an afterthought. But now it’s the distraction I want, the distraction I need. I don’t know what we’re doing here. I just – I’m looking for a goddamn break.”

He reaches over the console for her with one hand seeking hers. She slips her hand into his, lacing their fingers together and holding on tight.

“Here’s what I can offer you,” Logan starts. “I still own my parents’ beach house in Malibu. It’s between renters right now, so we can go there and hide away for the rest of the week into the weekend. We can talk about your dad or we can continue to pretend like the event in question doesn’t exist. We can try and remember what it was like to be those two teenagers again. We can try and get back the parts of ourselves we both left with each other. Because you know that you still have a part of me with you too. And then come Sunday night, we head back to Neptune. I go back to work on Monday and you…do whatever it is you need to do there before you go back to New York and your life.”

“And what if after these five days with you, I don’t want to go back to my life in New York?”

“Wait and see,” he tells her. “Maybe this is nothing more than the closure both of us so desperately need.”

“Is that what you want?” she asks softly. “Closure?”

What he wants is to be able to kiss her again. To pin her up against a wall and trail his mouth down from hers and over to that spot on her neck that always releases the breathiest little moan from her. He wants to take her up against said wall, driving into her until she comes undone with his name escaping her lips around a string of curse words. And he doesn’t want to stop after one impromptu road trip laced with heavy emotions.

He wants to be with her again, not to fuck her out of his system.

“What I want is for us to be happy,” he says. “Whatever that means to the both of us, that’s what I want. And if after five days, we decide that what we needed was closure, then I’ll be okay with that. But if we decide otherwise, I’ll be okay with that too.”

The radio volume swells with the opening notes of a new song.

_Closed off from love, I didn't need the pain_

_Once or twice was enough and it was all in vain_

_Time starts to pass, before you know it, you're frozen_

“Make me a promise?” Veronica asks. “Right here, right now?”

He glances over at her again as he glances back at his blind spot before switching lanes. “What kind of promise?”

“No matter what happens, we won’t go back to nine more years of radio silence?”

He smirks. “Doesn’t closure imply we’re done with each other?”

“You really think that’s how this is going to play out? This is us we’re talking about here, Logan. I’m not asking you for a big church wedding or three kids in three years. I just want you back in my life, in whatever capacity we can agree upon.”

“And what if we can’t agree?”

She hesitates, squeezing his hand in hers. “Then I’ll just have to guilt you into it by using the dead dad card.”

He laughs at that, deep and hearty. “I have one of those cards too you know.”

“You already played yours years ago. And you wasted it on sex.”

Logan keeps laughing. “So, sex with me is a waste now? I think your body would say otherwise.”

“No, no, no I never said the sex was a waste. Using your pity card to get me to have sex with you was a waste because I was going to do it anyway.”

“Are you saying I used my father’s _murder_ as an excuse to get you to sleep me with me? That did _not_ happen.”

Veronica clucks her tongue. “It did.”

“You’re delusional.”

“We were together when you got the news. You didn’t know how to feel about it given…everything, so you asked me to help you get your mind off of it.”

“ _You’re_ the one who immediately straddled my lap after that.”

“You asked me to do it.”

“Veronica –”

She’s the one laughing now, so full and joyous. And he knows without even looking at her that her nose is scrunched up in that cute way it does whenever she’s grinning really big or laughing really hard.

“Our first time together was pity sex?” he asks, squeezing her hand back.

She’s laughing even harder now, unable to get any words out.

“My whole life is a lie,” Logan continues on, dramatically. “Our entire relationship was a sham.”

“Chin up, Echolls,” she manages through her fit of laughter. “We can shuffle the deck and I’ll give you the opportunity to play that card again.”

“How chivalrous of you.”

Her laughter starts to die down. Her hand is still twined with his, her thumb brushing back and forth against his skin.

“Hey Veronica?”

She hums in response.

“It’s really good to hear you laugh again.”

She surprises him by lifting his hand up to her lips and placing a kiss on the back of it.

He may still be confused on all of the details, but Logan knows one thing for sure. The next couple of days will definitely be ones he won’t ever forget.


	5. Chapter 5

Somewhere around Santa Monica she starts complaining that she’s hungry. Logan’s just relieved that her appetite is coming back. He finds a place to get burgers and she drags him down to the beach to eat them, reminding him that not even unproperly sealed coffee was allowed in the BMW so surely ketchup wasn’t either.

He gives her crap about sitting in the sand when they’re both dressed in all black. She tosses him a smirk over her shoulder and finally takes off that damn cardigan, spreading it out in the sand and sitting on it. She reaches up for her bun and starts pulling pins out, letting her now medium length hair spill over her bare shoulders in loose waves. The breeze lifts it up as she leans forward to dig into their bag of food. She fishes out her burger before looking back up at him expectantly.

She really is the most beautiful woman he’s ever seen.

Logan grumbles and shakes his head as he takes off his _expensive_ suit coat and lays it down next to her. He rolls up the sleeves on his dress shirt and loosens his tie before sitting down and accepting his burger from her outstretched hand.

“You can afford the dry cleaning,” she tells him, before biting into her burger. 

“We’re going to have to buy clothes,” he says, unwrapping his food. “I’m not living in this suit for five days.”

“But it looks so good on you.”

He quirks an eyebrow at her as he takes a bite of his burger. “You’re good with that same black dress and cardigan for the rest of the week?”

She sighs, shaking her head and digging back around in the food bag for the fries. “I guess it was kind of stupid not to even pack a getaway bag. We’ll need toiletries too. Is this beach house furnished at least? Or do we need to add an air mattress to our shopping list?”

“Only one air mattress?”

“I’d chuck a fry at you, but that would be wasteful.” She pops one into her mouth instead.

Logan laughs. “Yes, it’s furnished. Part of the appeal to the tenants.”

“So, what are you, like their landlord?”

He shakes his head, stealing the bag of fries from her. “Nah, I hired someone for that. It’s just my property still. Brings in a little extra cash. I’d sell it, but the system I’ve got going with it now seems to be working well.”

“You’ve had it since Aaron died?”

He sighs. “Yeah.”

“I don’t think my dad owned any secret properties.”

“He doesn’t seem like the type.” He hesitates. “Didn’t seem like the type?”

She shakes her head, taking another bite of her burger.

“You know,” Logan starts, tentatively broaching the subject. “What you said earlier about you being your entire family now? Your mom is still alive.”

She shakes her head again, more vehemently this time. “You don’t know that. I don’t know that. She could have OD’d for all I know.”

Fuck, he’s going to have to tell her about his own experience with that. He can’t do that right now though. Not when she’s looking to him for comfort and strength. But if this thing between them surpasses five days, they’re going to have to get into it. They’re going to have to get into a lot of things. They can only ignore their past problems for so long.

“You’re good at finding people,” Logan offers instead. “You could hunt her down.”

“And tell her what? Hey Mom, you’re the only family I have left we should reconnect. While we’re at it, can I have my college tuition money you stole from me back? I’d like to pay off some loans.”

“V –”

“I don’t want anything to do with her, okay? She made it pretty damn clear that she didn’t want anything to do with me. Or my dad.”

He watches her pick at the foil wrapping her burger. Watches her stare at it like she’s just lost her appetite.

“Being alone really isn’t so bad,” he says softly. “Really frees up your holidays.”

She drags her gaze away from her food to look over at him, that same somber expression on her face.

“Do you ever see Trina anymore?”

He shakes his head. “Not really. The occasional phone call or e-mail. A stray postcard here and there. The Echolls family is basically just me.”

“No luck with the mystery brother?”

He shakes his head again.

“Tell me you still have Dick, at least.”

He has to laugh at that. He knows she hates the guy, but also knows that she came to realize how important their friendship is. She has Wallace and Mac. He has Dick.

“Yeah, he’s still around,” Logan tells her.

“Good,” she says nodding, picking off a piece of her hamburger bun and tossing it into her mouth.

He wants to tell her that neither of them has to be alone anymore. But that’s what the rest of this week is for – to see if that holds true. To see if they can still be what the other needs them to be.

“Did something else happen in New York?” he asks.

She looks back over at him again, the breeze picking up her hair. “What do you mean?”

“Besides Piz trying to turn you into a Stepford Wife and whatever it was that kept you from being here when Keith…did something happen in New York?”

She drops her gaze. “What makes you ask that?”

“I don’t know, it was just something that Mac said –”

“You were talking to Mac about me?”

“Well it’s sort of what you do when you haven’t seen a person in a while and you show up to a funeral for them –”

“The funeral wasn’t _for_ me.”

“No, I wasn’t saying that it was I –”

“What did she tell you?”

“Veronica, listen –”

“What did she say about me? About New York?”

The teasing, carefree Veronica that had returned within the last hour has vanished again. To be fair, she’d started her departure when his big mouth had brought up her mother. But now she was back to reaching for her cardigan, which still lay underneath her. She settles instead on pulling her knees into her chest and tugging down at the hem of her dress. The remnants of her burger rewrapped in the foil and tossed back into the food bag. 

“You want to get into this here?” he asks.

He’d been hoping they would at least make it to Malibu before this came up.

“What did she say?” Veronica presses again.

“Mostly, nothing that you haven’t already confessed to. That you thought you were happy out there, but you weren’t.”

“What else?”

“Veronica –”

“You said ‘mostly.’ What else?”

He pushes a hand through his hair, trying to decide if he’d rather be looking out at the ocean or at her when he says this. He chooses the ocean.

“You still have nightmares.”

“She can’t possibly know that –”

“She said when she stayed with you, you were calling my name out in your sleep. You told me that you only talk in your sleep when you’re having a nightmare. So, unless that’s changed, unless it was a very vivid sex dream you were having, what happened?”

She leans back on her hands, stretching her legs out long in front of her. “Nothing happened.”

“Then –”

“They’re the same ones I’ve always had, L. Moving cross-country doesn’t just make them go away.”

She’s mirroring him, looking out at the ocean, even the way she holds herself sitting in the sand.

He remembers the first time she’d had a nightmare in bed with him. Remembers hearing her mumble in her sleep, pleading “no” over and over again to some unseen force. Remembers how she never wanted to talk about them, but always welcomed the comforting embrace of his arms after.

He imagines there’s more of them with Keith gone now.

“Is that why you were calling for me?” Logan asks. “Same dreams, old habits?”

“I don’t know. I can’t remember what I dreamed about that week she stayed with me. It’s possible you could have been in it.”

He flinches at the thought that he could be a source of her pain, of her fears.

“You have nightmares about me?”

She scoots closer to him and for a second he thinks she’s about to rest her head against his shoulder. But she doesn’t.

“You’re not _the_ nightmare in them,” she clarifies. “Sometimes, you’re just _there_. A bystander. Other times you’re trying to help me.”

“I feel like I should make an obligatory comment about your subconscious choosing _me_ to be the one to help you after all these years.”

“Why?” she asks, turning her head to look up at him. “My waking self did it.”

Logan slings an arm around her shoulders experimentally, and, just as he’d hoped, she takes the invitation to curl into his side.

“Here’s my next question for you,” he starts. “How come you have no problem talking to me, but Wallace and Mac haven’t been able to get you to say a word? I welcome you coming to me for help, but why not them? And why now?”

“I told you already. You get it, they don’t.”

“Because my parents are dead?”

She presses herself against him closer in response.

“V –”

“Will you just accept the fact that I’ve missed you? I know the way I left things with us. I’m not proud of it. I’ve never been proud of it.” She shakes her head, her hair mussing up against his shirt. “But I have enough regrets already, especially with how things ended with my dad, I – I don’t want – I don’t _need_ anymore.”

_Pony up, Echolls. Your life hasn’t exactly been a cakewalk without her either._

“You’re not the only one with regrets, Veronica. I have plenty of those.”

“Look, I know there are things you want to discuss, things we _need_ to discuss, but do you think maybe we could wait a day or two before getting into all of that?”

“You think things are going to get ugly?”

“I know they are. This is us, after all. I’m just hoping to find that peace I’ve been looking for, before we take a swing at repairing what we broke.”

He skims his fingertips up and down the bare skin of her arm, feeling the goosebumps he leaves in his wake. “We could just agree to let bygones be bygones and never get into any of it.”

“Yeah and that would work for like what? One month? Maybe two? And then one of us would inevitably say something to screw it all up. We can’t walk around on eggshells forever. That’s no way to find peace.”

“Law school’s made you wise. Or should I be thanking that psychology degree I heard you earned from Stanford?”

“Thank the coming of age,” she says adjusting her head against his shoulder. “We may have been forced to grow up too fast with all the shit we went through, but I think everything else is finally catching up.”

“Wise words.”

“Come on,” she says, starting to lean away from him and push herself to her feet. “Let’s drive those last 30 minutes and find a mall or something so we can change clothes.”

Logan stops her, his hand at her hip causing her to shift her weight back to the ground. She looks over at him expectantly.

“For the record,” he starts. “I want this to work. I’ve always wanted this to work.”

She leans toward him again, reaches out to rub the pad of her thumb against his cheek. “Yeah. Me too.”

* * *

He’s back to driving again, the trunk now filled with the necessary supplies for the next five days. Veronica has dozed off beside him. She’s been out since they hit the unmoving L.A. traffic. They’ve been 10 minutes away for 20 minutes now. Isn’t rush hour grand?

The radio continues to play softly in the background.

_One night to be confused_

_One night to speed up truth_

_We had a promise made_

_Four hands and then away_

Logan wonders if she’s gotten much rest since her dad died. Wonders if some new strains of nightmares have been keeping her awake alongside the old ones. Has she let herself sleep? Or has she been too afraid to succumb to the darkness lurking there?

She doesn’t mutter anything beside him now. Maybe he brings her peace? He could laugh at the thought. He’s never done that for her, only brought her more chaos. But she’s looking toward him for it now – for both some newfound inner peace and her old self. Maybe he’s done more for her in their past than he realizes. Maybe he means more to her than he knows.

She had been right earlier. He knew that she loved him even though she could never say it. It was just one of the many things he’d come to understand about her. She was far from typical, but for a time she had been his and that was all that had mattered. She loved him in the secrets that she shared. She loved him in all the little touches and stolen glances. She loved him when she was cursing around his name, nails biting into his skin, as she fell apart around him.

But she had never said it. Those three little words.

He knows she’d told Duncan. Heard her say it to him with his own ears. Logan had always tried not to get caught up on why things with him had been different – on why she was so afraid of admitting to him, maybe even admitting to herself, how she felt. But he’d told himself they both knew without her saying it. That she didn’t need to.

But still…

He shakes his head as traffic crawls forward another foot. Something else to bring up when they decide to hash everything out.

A horn blares somewhere to their left and she jolts awake, looking around disoriented.

“Still 10 minutes away,” he tells her. “Add some air quotes to that.”

Veronica sighs, smoothing down the skirt of her dress and looking around at the traffic.

“We just need to get to that exit,” he says, pointing at the road sign ahead of them. “Should be smooth sailing from there.”

“Do you remember that soccer tournament Duncan and I were in that you and Lilly got dragged along to? The one in Santa Barbara?”

He looks over at her, confused already as to where this story is going.

“How did Lilly and I end up on that awful road trip again?” he asks.

Veronica grins. “Dad caught a big case at the Sheriff’s office and couldn’t get away and my mom was well…my mom. So, Jake and a very reluctant Celeste offered to take me since Duncan was in the same tournament. And I begged Lilly to come along, so I wasn’t alone with them all weekend. And you, my dear Logan, got dragged along because Duncan didn’t want to be outnumbered by girls all weekend.”

“Ah to be 13 again. Such a simpler time.”

“Okay, so you remember the tournament?”

He nods.

“Do you remember when Jake decided to take a shortcut to avoid whatever interstate traffic he was expecting, and we got stuck in another gridlock for like two hours because there was a downed powerline blocking the road and there was no way to get around it?”

Logan bursts out laughing at the memory. “Yes! And he finally got so frustrated he turned the car around, drove down the wrong side of the road for a couple miles since no traffic could come from that direction anyway, adding _another_ hour to the trip just to get back to the interstate, and the whole time Celeste was going on and on about how this isn’t England, this is illegal, Jake, what kind of example are you setting for these kids?”

“And Lilly started complaining that she was hungry, and she would not shut up about it. And then Duncan got mad at her because all of her talk about food made him hungry too, and then they wouldn’t stop arguing and yelling at each other.”

“And in one day Celeste Kane questioned her entire life’s choices including her decision to have kids.”

Veronica laughs. “You and I were just sitting there staring at each other, silently asking what we got ourselves into.”

“Never felt more grateful for my lack of family time until that very moment.”

She keeps laughing, the full kind with the crinkled nose and bright eyes. “When we were stuck not moving for those two hours, Duncan was trying to get everyone to play ‘I Spy,’ but you and Lilly kept trying to make it dirty.”

“Oh god,” Logan groans, burying his face in his hands for a moment before looking back up to make sure the traffic hasn’t moved any. It hasn’t. “I was the actual worst.”

“I spy something penis-shaped.”

“Is this an impression or are you being serious?”

She smirks at him and he nearly chokes on his own laughter. “Oh my god you’re serious. Okay, let me look.”

He scans the traffic scene around them, his eyes settling onto a very unfortunately shaped plant growing on the side of the road.

“That plant?” he asks, pointing to it.

She grins back at him, nodding. “Kind of looks like yours.”

He scoffs, feigning hurt, but finds himself unable to control his laughter. “You pervert, no it does not.”

“I think it does.”

“You haven’t seen it for nine years. You’ve clearly forgotten what it looks like.”

“Nope,” she says, shaking her head. “Ingrained in my memory. Okay, your turn.”

Logan looks around for something he can make dirty. “I spy a great pair of boobs…not on a woman.”

Veronica groans inwardly. “Please tell me they’re on an inanimate object.”

“Look for yourself.”

She groans again, eyes scanning around them. He watches her look, amusement and focus intertwined in her features.

“Noooo,” she starts laughing when she sees it. “They can’t be serious.”

The car in front of them on their left has one of those stick figure families commonly found on minivans to show off their kids. But this one is clearly meant to be a parody on the traditional, a stick figure man sandwiched between two stick figure women with boobs drawn bigger than their heads.

“I hate that so much,” she keeps laughing.

“Thinking of buying one of those for Dick.”

“Please don’t give him any ideas, he might take it as a tattoo suggestion.”

“Nah, dude’s afraid of needles.”

She shakes her head again, looking around them likely in search of something else to make dirty.

“You know what else I remember from that tournament?” Logan asks.

“That my team kicked ass and Duncan’s team lost after the first round?”

He laughs. “Besides that.”

She settles back against the passenger seat. “All right, do tell.”

“I remember thinking how lucky I was to have found friends like the three of you.”

Her face softens and she reaches over for his hand again. “That really was the beginning of the Fab Four, wasn’t it?”

“Those were some of the best of years of my life,” he nods. “We had so much fun, the four of us. I miss Lilly. And I miss Duncan. But nothing compares to the way I’ve missed you.”

“I’m back,” she says, squeezing his hand. “And I’m not leaving again.”


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains dialogue from Mr. Kiss and Tell, the second VM novel. I do not own this dialogue and have altered parts of it slightly.  
> TW: contains mention of suicide and overdoses.

The beach house is larger than he remembers it being. Set just off the Pacific Coast Highway, the nearly 4,000 square foot residence sits cliffside, overlooking a long stretch of private beach and ocean. He’s already anticipating Veronica’s complaint at the number of steps it will take to get down to the beach. Well actually, down won’t be as bad as up. But still, she’ll likely complain in both directions. He smirks at the thought, imagining her begging him to carry her. 

Logan watches her face as she steps out of his car and takes in the exterior of the house. She looks almost…overwhelmed?

She crosses her arms over her chest. “Your dad’s movies were not _that_ good.”

He laughs, walking around to the back of the car to start retrieving their purchases from the trunk. “He knew a guy who knew a guy and here we are. Just wait until you see the inside. And the pool.”

She tosses him another awestruck look before moving to help him with the bags. “You’ve owned this place since the summer after high school graduation and you never bothered to bring me up here?”

“Yeah, sure, I can just imagine Keith’s reaction to finding out we drove two and half hours away to shack up in this huge house alone for a weekend.”

He notices the flicker of emotion pass over her face. It’s gone nearly as quickly as it appeared. Still avoiding that subject apparently.

“We had plenty of fun shacking up at The Grand,” Logan adds, wiggling his eyebrows. “What else would have been accomplished by coming here?”

“I like to be wooed as much as the next girl,” she says, flipping her hair over her shoulder in an exaggerated gesture.

He snorts. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

Logan leads her inside the house. He hasn’t been here in years and he’s forgotten just how much this place reminds him of his old home before the fire – same interior decorators and all. It sends a shiver down his spine at the momentary thought of Aaron. This beach house, at least, was not a shrine to his father’s movie career and had significantly more input from his mother. It’s her presence he feels the most here, her sense of style.

The glass table in the foyer is decorated with a bowl of faux white roses, and a tree branch sporting more flowers sprouting down from the ceiling where a typical chandelier would go. It strikes another memory of his parents.

_“Lynn, honey, wouldn’t you rather just put in a nice sparkly chandelier there? It’s already wired for one and everything.”_

_“We have enough of those everywhere else. This compliments the theme.”_

_“We have a theme?”_

_“Obviously, darling, that’s the point of hiring interior decorators.”_

He shakes his head, clearing the cobwebs of thought and refocusing on Veronica. She’s wandered into the living room with its high, vaulted ceiling and sliding glass doors that open up to the back patio with the pool and the stunning view of the ocean. She’s skimming her fingertips along the back of the couch as she walks toward the doors.

“This place is incredible,” she breathes, staring outside as the setting sun illuminates the never-ending landscape of water.

He moves to stand next to her, letting himself imagine another life where he was the one living here sharing this place with her.

“Most of the reviews I get on this place are about this view,” Logan tells her. “A lot of people say that’s what makes it all worth it.”

“I can see why. Sort of makes you feel like we’re at the edge of the world, doesn’t it?”

He gives her a curious look. “You say that like you’ve never seen the ocean before.”

“Yeah, but in Neptune…it’s nothing like this.”

They’d been at a beach about an hour or so earlier, staring out at this very same ocean. But the way she’s staring at it now, so full of wonder like a kid from California seeing their first snowfall blanket the earth, he has to wonder what else she sees out there.

“You miss California, don’t you?” he asks.

“I miss…” she trails off, continuing to stare out at the sunset for a moment before quietly finishing her thought. “A lot of things.”

“If you’re not happy in New York, there’s no hard and fast rule that says you have to stay there. Lawyers are needed all across the country, you know.”

“I’ve already started applying for jobs out there.”

“Turn them down.”

“I couldn’t handle living in Dad’s house.”

“Sell it and buy a different one.”

Mac’s warning from earlier flickers through his mind.

_All you have to do is ask and she’ll give up that entire New York life and come back here permanently. If you ask her to jump –_

“But it’s your decision,” Logan adds quickly. “I’m not trying to force your hand, either way. You just seem – you seem like things haven’t been all that great even before your dad…”

She drags her gaze away from the view to look over at him. “They haven’t. I just don’t know what I want right now.” She turns back to the window. “What about you?”

“What about me?”

“All this talk about what I want, and how I’ve been doing, and we’ve barely talked about you. What is it that you want, Logan? Are you happy with where you’re at in life?”

He sighs, mirroring her position at the glass doors. “I don’t think I’ve been happy in a long time either.”

“What do you need?”

 _You_.

“Guess I’m trying to figure that out for myself right now, too.”

She touches his arm, stepping away from him. “Can I borrow your phone? I should probably call Wallace or Mac. Let them know what’s up.”

He nods, watching her pick it up from the glass table in the foyer where he left it before disappearing into the dining room. He knows he shouldn’t eavesdrop on the call, but he finds that he can’t help himself from doing it anyway, even if he’ll only be able to hear her side of the conversation. He lingers in the foyer, pretending to rifle through their shopping bags.

“Hi, it’s me. No, no, calm down, I’m fine. My idea. Look I’m sorry, but I just couldn’t – I don’t know. I don’t know. We’re taking the rest of the week into the weekend. I’ll be back Sunday. Yes, we. No, that’s not – You’re overreacting. It’s just something that I had to do, okay? It has nothing to do with him. No. No. You don’t understand – He does. He does. Look, just – No. Don’t worry, okay? Yes, Sunday. I need to do this. I never said it made sense. Yeah, okay. Okay. _Okay_. Mmm-hmm. Yeah. Bye.”

She walks back out into the foyer and he looks up at her expectantly, his hands wrapped around a t-shirt he intends to change into.

“Everything okay?” he asks.

Veronica tugs the sleeves of her cardigan down over her hands, nodding. “Yeah.”

“You don’t sound too sure about that.”

She squats down next to him, digging through their bags for something else to change into. “They’re just worried about me.”

“Can you blame them?”

She shakes her head, pulling out a long sleeve t-shirt and some cotton shorts. “I’m grateful that I have them and that they care so much, but –”

“That’s family for ya.”

She gives him a small smile as she stands back up. “I guess they _are_ all I have left.”

“No, they’re not,” he says, standing up with his new set of comfier clothes to change into in his hands. “You have me too.”

He swears he sees the beginning glisten of tears in her eyes before she looks away.

“Uh, mind showing me where I can go change?” she asks.

Logan bends and gathers up the rest of their bags. “Come on, I’ll give you a bedroom tour and you can pick which one you want.”

“How many bedrooms does this place have?”

He hums. “Seven.”

“ _Seven_? You were a family of four, why the hell did you need seven bedrooms?”

“Rich people are the worst, aren’t they?”

She laughs, following him as he heads toward the staircase. “I might have to pull a Goldilocks on you and try out every bed until I find the one that’s just right.”

“And what if we stake a claim on the same bed? Rock, paper, scissors? Best two of three?”

He hears her hum from behind him. “Wouldn’t be the first time we shared the same bed.”

“Tease,” he laughs over his shoulder.

Her whispered breath is in his ear as they reach the top landing. “Who said I was teasing?”

* * *

They’re sitting outside on the back patio across from each other, huddled around the firepit. They’ve changed into comfortable clothes and he got her to eat a little bit more. Now Logan finds himself wondering how long she’s going to stay sitting on her own lounge chair, before she moves over and joins him on his. He’s longing for her touch again, for the weight of her sinking against him.

 _She_ is what he wants, the thing, or rather the person, who would make him happy. He just has to tell her. But maybe she already knows.

“So, what’s it like having actual seasons?” Logan asks, watching her watch the firelight dance between them.

She laughs. “It’s nice. Opens up all these new wardrobe options.”

“And I’m sure you look great in all of them.”  
  
“Flattery will get you everywhere.”

He laughs, leaning back against the back of the lounge chair. “So, what are our lists of topics we’re free to discuss that leave you with your couple of days of peace and save us from discussing nothing but the weather for two days?”

She sighs, stretching back against her lounge chair as well, lacing her hands together behind her head. “The stars out here seem just as infinite as the ocean. Kind of makes you want to get lost in them.”

He had thoughts about getting lost in the ocean once. About letting the waves take him away from everything, a kind of feeling so numb it took two drug overdoses to knock him out of it. But surely her current thought process isn’t as dark as his had been back then. Surely she doesn’t feel that hopeless right now…right?

“When you say get lost in them you don’t mean –”

She looks up at him, meets his gaze across the fire. “No, not like that. Just…I don’t know how to explain it. Maybe just exist somewhere else for a while, without everything else weighing you down. A momentary freedom before life drags you back.”

“Isn’t that what we’re doing right now?”

Veronica sighs, returning her gaze skyward. “Yeah, I guess it is.”

Now would be a good time to tell her. It’s left sitting open-ended there on the table. But it’s not a light and airy topic. It’s nothing but more darkness threatening to drag her down. He can’t do that to her. He wants her to be able to get some sleep tonight.

“Just say it,” she says, quietly.

“Say what?”

“Whatever it is that you’re bordering on telling me. I can still read your silences, Logan. Something’s bothering you.”

“It’s not exactly a pleasant topic.”

“Are we about to fight about something here?”

He shakes his head. “No. But it’s not going to make you feel any better.”

She sits up on her lounge chair, tucking her legs under herself in a crisscross position. “I’m listening.”

“We don’t have to do this right now,” he tells her. “You wanted some calm before we got into our missing nine years.”

“I know,” she says softly. “But whatever this is, you clearly need to talk about it. And I get the feeling you’re not going to feel calm until you do.”

Oh no, they’re really doing this.

“It’s some dark shit, Veronica. I hit a really rough patch a couple of years ago. Nothing about it was pleasant.”

“So, tell me. I won’t judge. Same darkness stone, remember?”

Logan sighs, pushing a hand through his hair. If he’s going to do this, he might as well just lay everything out there for her. She wanted to know everything, and this was part of the everything. But it’s not a time in his life he likes to revisit. “I uh, I was hitting the bottle pretty hard there for a while. And some other stuff too – bad stuff, hard stuff – the kind you want to pass off as partying and not admit to having an actual addiction to.”

He watches her scoot closer to the edge of her seat, like she’s ready to come join him if he needs her to.

He continues. “It got to the point where even Dick was concerned that I was out of control. Like, I uh, I woke up in a woman’s house once, passed out on her sofa. No idea who she was or how I got there. She didn’t seem to know me either, but luckily, she didn’t try and press charges. The fucked up thing was, I wouldn’t have cared if she did. I didn’t care about much of anything anymore. Um, what brings this all up is that I thought about losing myself to the ocean once. I remember being out on my surfboard one morning and sitting there for the longest time. I’d paddled out as far as I could, and the waves were amazing, but I couldn’t make myself stand up. I thought about just rolling off the board and letting myself drift. Seeing if I could drown without too much effort.”

He sees the sadness settle back in over her features, the despair that’s been wafting on and off all day. She’s on the verge of tears again and he wishes he’d waited for another opportunity to tell her all of this.

“Logan,” she chokes out his name, her voice thick with tears.

She’s on her feet and striding toward him, inserting herself between the vee of his legs, and wrapping her arms around him as she leans against his chest.

“Oh, there’s more,” he says with a humorless laugh, returning her tight embrace and holding her up against him. “I overdosed. Twice. Neither time was intentional and the first one wasn’t enough of a wakeup call for me, but the second one was.”

She shakes her head against his chest, clinging to him even tighter.

“When you made that comment about your mom earlier, I just – I knew I was going to have to tell you about my own experience at some point, but I didn’t want it to be so soon. You’re dealing with enough right now, you don’t need this too.”

She shakes her head again. “Why didn’t anyone call me?”

“Call you when?”

“You almost _died_ , Logan. Multiple times. Why didn’t anyone call me? Dick not calling, I get. But Wallace? Mac? They were still in Neptune they had to have known, had to have heard about it through the grapevine.”

“They probably didn’t want to burden you with it. I know I didn’t.”

“You almost _died_ ,” she says again, her voice cracking on the last word.

“But I didn’t,” he says, threading his fingers through her hair. “I’m okay. I’m here.”

“But what if you weren’t? What if you got lost in the ocean? Or in whatever drug/alcohol combination that was too much for you? Losing my dad is bad enough, if I had lost you too? _Fuck_.” She wipes at her eyes. “I know you weren’t mine to lose, but…you’ve always been mine to lose. If I had just stayed in Neptune –”

“No, no, god, Veronica this isn’t on you. This was me and all of my bad habits finally coming to a head.”

“I could’ve –”

“No. This isn’t me trying to guilt you into anything, I just needed you to know that things haven’t been easy for me either these past nine years. You say you lost yourself, well so did I. I’ve gotten better, V. I’m clean. I’m in therapy and it’s helping. You asked me earlier if I’ve been happy, and truthfully no, I’ve been a fucking mess. But I managed to get myself together, get a good job I’m happy with, had a healthy relationship with Carrie for a while until things went south there. You don’t have to worry about me, but if we’re dragging out all of the skeletons these next couple of days, that’s my biggest one. I just wanted it out of the way.”

She sniffles against his shirt, her fists bunching into the back of it. “You almost died.”

“I know,” he says, rubbing small circles against her back.

“I almost lost you. The regrets I would have had. _Fuck_ , someone should have told me.”

“I don’t think it’s that common to inform your ex-girlfriend about your drug problem.”

“Is that all I am to you?” she asks quietly. “Just your ex?”

“No,” he says, fisting his hands into the back of her shirt. “You’re so much more than that. You’re the one who got away. The one that I still think about in empty parking garages and Italian restaurants, and whenever I smell something resembling marshmallows. You’re the one I’ve always hoped would come back. And I didn’t want you seeing me like that. If you came back to me, I wanted it to be because you wanted to. I didn’t want it to come out of pity or guilt. I turned my life around _for me_. But a part of me still hoped that you would be there with me once I did.”

“Do you know me at all?” she asks, looking at him, tear stains streaking down her cheeks. “I would have been there for you because I _wanted_ to be. I hate that you had to go through all of that alone.”

“You had a life, Veronica. I didn’t want to interrupt it.”

“Yeah, a life which you’re a part of.”

“You made it pretty damn clear that I was no longer a welcome part of it.”

She pushes herself up into a seated position so she can really look at him. “We show up for each other. That’s what we do. It’s what we’ve always done. Your mom died, I was there. The PCH’ers jumped you on that bridge, I was there. They tried to frame you for Felix’s murder, I helped clear your name. Beaver tried to kill me on that rooftop after graduation, _you_ were there. I thought he’d killed my dad, and you were there. Some idiot spread a topless video of me around school, and you, stupidly I might add, went after him. My dad died, and you showed up after nine years of radio silence and let me drive us 150 miles away from Neptune for the weekend no questions asked. If you had told me that you were in trouble, that you needed help, I would have been there.”

“I know you would have. You would have blown off your classes and stayed with me, trying to nurse me back to health. I didn’t want you to do that. I didn’t want you to put everything you were working toward on hold for me.”

“I can’t believe I almost lost you,” she mumbles again.

Logan tugs on her sleeve and she falls back against his chest, curling into him. “I’m just as stubborn as you are, I’m not going anywhere without a fight.”

Her fingers slip under the back of his shirt, deftly locating that spot on his lower back where his father had once put out a lit cigarette against his skin. Of course she remembers where all of his scars are. She had spent so many nights tracing over them with her fingertips and her lips. There had even been that one drunken night in college when he’d given her a Sharpie and told her to draw shapes out of them. That had been a fun surprise to wake up to.

“You protect me, I protect you,” she says softly.

His breath catches in his throat. It’s what he’d told her the night they found out Aaron had died. They’d both woken up from nightmares, having both been through a lot in the past 24 hours. They were both visibly shaken, and he was trying to calm himself down as much as he was her. They would keep each other safe. The world couldn’t hurt them if they were together.

Does she think that she’s failed him? She hasn’t. She couldn’t.

“Veronica –”

“I’m sorry I wasn’t there. We were supposed to look out for each other and –”

“You didn’t call me when your dad died.”

She pulls back to look up at him again. “What?”

“Why didn’t you call me? Why did I have to hear about it from Wallace?”

He sees the realization pass across her face, the way she buries her face back against his shirt instead of answering him.

“You didn’t want to burden me, the same way I didn’t want to burden you. You knew I’d show up. You knew I’d be here for you, give you an escape option. You didn’t want to be the one to ask for it, but it was given to you anyway.”

“I don’t want to do it alone anymore,” she says softly.

“Yeah, I don’t either.”

She slips one of her hands out from under his shirt and holds up her pinky finger to him. When he raises an eyebrow at her in question, she tells him, “It worked when we were 12.”

Logan twines one of his pinky fingers around hers. “What are we promising?”

“To let each other back in. We’re good on the being there for each other when asked part, but we suck at doing the asking.”

He nods. “Okay. It’s a promise.”

She nods too before releasing his finger from hers. “I’m really glad I didn’t lose you.”

“And I’m really glad you still want me around.”

“I should be saying that to you. With the way I left things between us –”

“Let’s save that topic for another day, shall we? One heavy discussion at a time here.”

She laughs a little. “Okay, good plan.”

He skims a hand down her back. “I didn’t mean to just drop all of this on you like this, but –”

“No, I’m glad you told me.”

“Even with everything else you’re trying to work through right now? I didn’t mean to pile on.”

“We said we were going to do this. Spend the rest of the week getting to know each other again. The good, the bad, and the ugly. You help me through my shit, I help you through yours.”

“The new and improved ‘you protect me, I protect you.’”

Her hands are under his shirt again, her skin against his – fuck he hadn’t realized how much he’d missed her little touches like this.

“Logan?”

He hums in response.

“Don’t die on me, okay? I need you.”

He bends down to kiss her forehead. “Not going anywhere, Bobcat. You’re stuck with me.”

He hears her react to the old nickname with a sharp intake of breath and feels the press of her fingertips even more firmly against his back. Her lips brush across the pulse point at his neck, before she rotates in his arms to press her back against his chest.

They sit there watching the fire burn out before them, lost in the comfort of one another. A few minutes later, Veronica falls asleep against him. He carries her upstairs to her selected bedroom of choice, before settling down into his own. He wonders if she’ll wake up and seek him out in the middle of the night. A part of him hopes that she does.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've modeled this beach house after an actual listing on Zillow. You can find the house here if you're interested in getting a visual: https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/27560-Pacific-Coast-Hwy-Malibu-CA-90265/20554989_zpid/ I also posted some pictures of it on my Twitter, and will probably post them on Discord sometime this week as well.


	7. Chapter 7

That night Logan dreams of the ocean. Sinking beneath the waves and looking up through the water at the distorted sunlight. He can taste the salt, hear the muffled cries from…himself? A woman? Veronica? It’s her he rationalizes. Calling out for him, begging for him not to leave her alone. He claws his way toward her voice, through the ocean waters thick like mud. When his head finally breaks the surface, there’s no one. A desolate beach lays yards away, the only sound coming from the waves slapping against the shore. She must have grown tired of waiting for him, moved on. He is once again, completely alone.

Logan wakes with a start, the unfamiliar surroundings of the beach house jarring him after such a dream. He stretches his limbs out long against the bed, arching his back to ease the stiffness. He thinks she may have joined him in the middle of the night, being careful not to wake him, and slipping out before he woke up. He can smell her on the sheets, but wonders if that’s just from him holding her for as long as he did last night. The familiar scent of her shampoo and perfume engrained in his memory from nights wrapped up in her, playing tricks on his mind after the last whirlwind of a day he’d spent with her.

He rolls himself out of bed and starts readying himself for the day, wondering what today will bring. After such heavy confessions and emotions yesterday, he too would like a light and airy day of calm before barreling into everything that ultimately tore them apart. He wants to sit with her poolside, maybe catch up on how their friends have been lately, take the conversation off of themselves for a bit. Maybe he’ll track down a store and buy some marshmallows to roast over the firepit so they can make s’mores later. She used to love doing that at the Kane house back in middle school. And weren’t they here trying to recapture that youth?

As he ascends the stairs, the unmistakable scent of bacon frying fills the air. He finds her in the kitchen, tending to the meat over a frying pan, a fresh stack of pancakes set off to the side. He’d made her this after graduation when she thought Keith had died on that plane. Now Keith was actually gone, and she was the one remaking that same breakfast for him.

“Well, isn’t this domestic?” Logan asks, sliding into one of the high-top chairs at the kitchen island.

She glances at him over her shoulder, tossing him a smile before turning back to the stove to flip the bacon. “Couldn’t sleep, figured I might as well make myself useful.”

“How long have you been up?”

She shrugs, sliding some finished slices onto the paper towels to her right.

“Did you sleep at all?” he asks.

“A couple of hours at least.”

“Do I want to know what was keeping you awake?”

She purses her lips as she spins around to carry the finished the bacon over to him at the island. “No. Want some coffee?”

He nods, watching her move around the kitchen like she’s been cooking in here her entire life. A part of him wants to press her further, while another part of him knows better. He also wants to ask if she slipped into bed with him last night, but he’s worried the question might embarrassment her. She clearly didn’t want him to know that she was there if she had.

“I feel like I should be the one making _you_ breakfast considering everything,” Logan tells her instead.

She shakes her head, bringing over the stack of pancakes. “I need to stay busy. It helps to keep my mind…off of things.”

“You can’t keep running from it forever, you know?”

“I can for a few more days.”

He accepts the plate she hands him and starts piling food onto it. She steps back to the kitchen island with their two steaming mugs of coffee. He watches her gingerly take a tentative sip from the hot beverage, noticing she didn’t bring over a plate for herself.

“You’re not eating?” he asks.

“I already ate. Like I said, I’ve been up for a while.”

“Veronica –”

“What, you want to see my dirty plate as proof?”

He shakes his head, reaching for the bottle of syrup.

“I know you’re worried about me, Logan,” she says, the tone of her voice softening. “But I promise you I’m doing okay, all things considered.”

He takes a bite of the pancakes, immediately thinking that her pancake-making-skills rival his own. “So, what do you want to do on this fine Thursday?”

She shrugs, staring down into her coffee mug as she swirls the liquid around inside.

“If you need some alone time –” he starts.

“No,” she cuts him off quickly. “I don’t – I don’t want to be alone.”

He’s relieved to hear her say that. “Okay well, not to plan our entire day around food, but there’s a grill down by the beach cabana –”

“I’m sorry, the beach cabana?”

“Well yeah. After you head down all of those stairs to get to the beach, there’s another patio that’s part of this property. There’s another fire pit and a grill. A couple of beach chairs. It’s all covered by this retractable awning, so we always just called it the cabana –”

“Again I say, your father’s movies weren’t that good.”

Logan laughs. “Hey now don’t blame the beneficiary.”

She smirks, lifting the mug back up to her lips.

“Anyway, I was thinking maybe I could grill something for us later. Maybe we could even use the firepit to roast marshmallows and make s’mores.”

She hums. “You know, I can’t remember the last time I had a s’more.”

“The old you used to like them,” he teases. “Do you remember all those summer nights we used to spend around bonfires with Duncan and Lilly?”

Veronica nods. “I remember one night the summer before 8th grade started, playing Chubby Bunny with you guys. You know, that game where you try to fit as many marshmallows in your mouth as you can and still be able to say the phrase ‘chubby bunny’ around the mouthful? I remember winning and Lilly making some really crude joke about what I’m able to fit in my mouth.”

“She wasn’t wrong,” he says, with a waggle of his eyebrows.

He regrets it as soon as he says it. Now is definitely not the time to be making jokes about oral sex or thinking about her lips having been wrapped around his cock in the past. But the look in her eyes tells him that she’s in no way uncomfortable with his comment. In fact, if he remembers correctly, she might even be turned on by it.

“I never tried talking when I had you in my mouth though.”

_Oh fuck._

“I appreciate you never referring to my penis as a chubby bunny. It helps with the whole manly ego thing.”

She laughs, shaking her head and setting her coffee mug down. “I do what I can.”

He finds himself incapable of thinking about anything else besides her on her knees between his legs. How the hell did they end up in this conversation, and how the hell do they get back out of it?

“So, the s’mores?” Veronica prods, thankfully getting him back on track.

“Yes, right, that. We’ll do that later.”

She nods slowly. “Great, so, what do you want to do until dinner? It’s only,” she glances behind her at the clock on the stove. “9:45 AM.”

Oh, he has some ideas now. None of which he thinks are going to fly in the current state of things. But wow, he really can’t stop staring at her mouth.

“Well, we could um, keep reminiscing about middle school?”

“Ah yes, because that’s truly when we hit our peak,” she laughs, turning away to start cleaning up the kitchen while he finishes eating.

“Hey, you said you wanted to find your old self again,” he says, pointing his fork in her direction. “What better place to start than the beginning?”

“So, my life started when I met you?”

“No,” he laughs at the teasing expression on her face. “But since I didn’t know you prior to that, I’m no help there.”

She places the bacon frying pan down in the sink before looking back over at him. “You’ve known me longer than anyone else in my life has, you know that?”

He hadn’t really thought about it. But with Lilly and Duncan gone and Wallace and Mac not making appearances until halfway through high school, and now with her dad…

“This is true,” Logan nods. “Very few were privy to Veronica Mars, the soccer star years.”

She chucks the dish towel at him. “Stop.”

“Law school was really just the fall back plan for when you didn’t make the Olympic team, wasn’t it?”

“Logan –”

“That soccer tournament we were talking about yesterday? I seem to remember you scoring the winning goal. Like a mini Mia Hamm.”

Veronica rolls her eyes. “I was a decent player, okay? I never intended to make a career out of it.”

“Yeah, as I recall from our last fleeting moments together, you intended to make a career out of the FBI. What happened with that?”

She starts scrubbing the pan in the sink. “People change. Dreams change.”

“That’s part of yourself you feel like you lost, huh?”

She stills her movements, dropping her head. “Weren’t we talking about middle school? When I was 13, I wanted to be a pastry chef.”

“You compliment a girl’s homemade cookies one time and she lets it go to her head.”

“I didn’t hear you complaining about those pancakes either.”

He laughs at that. “I’ll be sure to lick the plate clean for extra emphasis.”

“You do that, and I’ll start calling you Backup.”

He finishes off his breakfast and moves to put his plate and silverware in the dishwasher before moving to stand next to her at the sink. “Want some help?”

“I’m almost done,” she says, gesturing at the few pans she has left to dry.

“How long ago did Backup die?” he asks quietly.

She sighs. “Right before I graduated from Stanford.”

Logan reaches out to rub at the spot between her shoulder blades.

“Everyone I love keeps leaving me, huh?”

“Some of us come back,” he says softly. “All you needed was for your friends to ask nicely.”

Veronica turns around and envelops him in a hug, the damp dishrag still clutched in her hand and now pressed against his back.

“I’m just glad you’re still alive to come back to,” she mutters into the front of his shirt.

Ah, so she’s still been thinking about last night’s confessions. He’s glad he got through that dark, rough patch too. Glad he’s able to be here for her now, when she needs it most. Glad that he might very well be getting another chance with the girl who got away.

“What can I say, I’m not an easy guy to get rid of,” Logan jokes, trying to re-lighten the mood.

“Never been more grateful for that.”

He gets an idea. A kind of dumb, kind of amazing idea that might actually help cheer her up.

“You know what else we used to do in middle school? Besides eat copious amounts of marshmallows and play slash watch you play soccer?”

She looks up at him. “What?”

“Build pillow forts.”

She snorts. “Celeste thought we were mental. ‘You kids are too old to be doing stuff like that.’ ‘There better not be sex stuff going on in there.’ ‘Jake, are they old enough to know what sex stuff is yet?’”

“She always did underestimate my ability to create the comfiest movie watching setup possible.”

“Even if doing so meant we all had to crowd around the portable DVD player instead of just watching it on the TV.”

“It was about the aesthetic, Veronica.”

“Please, like you knew what that word meant back then.”

He huffs, letting her step out of his embrace to finish drying the last pan. “So, what do you say? Do you want to be 13 again today? Complete with pillow forts and toasted marshmallows?”

“With the number of beds in this house, we could probably fashion more than a pillow fort. More like a pillow mansion.”

“Our past selves would be very impressed with us.”

She tosses him a grin as she moves to put the last pan away. “I’ll get the pillows from upstairs. You get everything else.”

* * *

Around 45 minutes later they’ve managed to create one hell of a…something.

“I don’t remember it looking like that,” Veronica says, crossing her arms over her chest beside him as they stare at their creation.

“We didn’t have as many pillows to work with at the Kane house,” Logan explains.

“Yeah, but I feel like it’s missing something. What did we forget?”

“No, no it’s supposed to look like that. It’s fine.”

“Maybe we used too many pillows.”

“No such thing,” he scoffs. “Come on, let’s check it out from the inside.”

He bends at the spot where they’ve left an opening, crawling beneath the sheet and into the fort.

“I’m too old for this,” Veronica grumbles, crawling in behind him.

He’s propped himself up on a mound of pillows collected from all over the house when she crawls toward him, sitting down at his feet, and eyeing their surroundings warily.

“Was it always so dark in these things?” she asks.

“Yes, it was optimal for movie watching darkness during the day. That’s what started their inception.”

“Does this place have a portable DVD player?”

He shrugs. “I doubt it.”

She shifts closer to him, sprawling out on the mound of pillows to his left. “So, building the fort was the point of all of this, huh?”

“Kept you busy, didn’t it?”

She laughs. “A nearly full hour of distraction, thank you so much.”

“Don’t forget to include clean up time in that.”

She laughs again, rolling onto her side and propping herself up on her elbow to look at him. “I realize I don’t even know if you want kids, but I think you’d make a really great dad someday, Logan.”

“With my parents’ track record, I’m almost too afraid to have any of my own.”

“You’re nothing like them. Who they were doesn’t define who you are.”

He rolls his neck along the pillow, looking up at her. Laying like this with her reminds him of too many nights spent staying up late talking after sex. For how short their relationship was in the grand scheme of things, in this massive gap of nine years apart, he still feels like the time he spent with her can never be topped.

“Thank you,” he says softly.

“Pillow fort confession for old times’ sake?” she asks.

It was something else they used to do years ago. Lilly always used to say there were no secrets in the fort. It was kind of like Vegas. What happened here, stayed here, but you couldn’t lie about it.

“All right, let’s hear it.”

She drops down from her elbow and rolls over on to her back. “When we were 13, I wanted you to be my first kiss.”

Now he sits up and mirrors her previous position, propping himself up on his elbow. “Wait, you did?”

She meets his eyes and nods. “We’d built one of these things. And it was Duncan’s turn to pick the movie which meant he was taking _forever,_ and Lilly was off collecting as many snacks as she could carry. We were alone and you were making me laugh, and you started to lean over and I really thought you were going in for a kiss. But you were just reaching for an extra pillow.” She laughs, shaking her head at herself. “I spent weeks after that thinking about kissing you. Imagining what it would be like and what it would do to our little friendship group. And then Lilly told me she had a crush on you. And I knew I could never compete with her.”

Well this is certainly brand new information. 13-year-old Logan never thought he had a chance in hell with Veronica Mars.

“Even when we were together,” she continues on softly. “I couldn’t help but think from time to time that this wouldn’t be happening if she was still alive.”

“Don’t do that,” he tells her. “There is no comparison.”

“But you loved her,” Veronica says, meeting his gaze again.

He shakes his head, lowering back down from his propped-up elbow and shifting his weight so he’s hovering over her. “I loved _you_.” 

“Past tense, huh? You sure put in a lot of effort for a guy who’s moved on.”

“Did you hear me last night? You being the one who got away implies that I never got over you.”

He watches her draw her lower lip in between her teeth. Those lips he’s been thinking about all morning. Would it be wrong to kiss her right now?

“And I seem to recall telling you yesterday in the car that I never got over you either.”

Fuck it. Fuck the timing and circumstances and everything else going on. They both want this.

Logan shifts his body weight again so he’s leaning into her, his body covering hers as he bends his head to capture her lips with his own. He half expects her to be startled by his actions, but she reacts like she anticipated them – widening the vee of her thighs to accommodate for him and slipping her fingers up through his hair to hold his mouth against hers. She’s the one who deepens the kiss, moaning into his mouth a little when he reciprocates.

There’s never been anything quite like kissing her. It’s addicting, intoxicating. Nine years without kissing her, and now, for the life of him, he can’t seem to remember why he stopped.

What if they stop reliving their early teen years and skip ahead to when they were 17 and spent the entire summer making out? He’ll gladly spend the next four days like this.

Logan skims a hand down her side, drawing one of her legs up over his hip, in an attempt to draw one of those breathy moans from her that always drove him wild. He succeeds, her hips bucking up to meet his as he kisses his way down to her neck. When she shifts against the pillows however, the top sheet of the fort comes fluttering down on top of them.

He flinches at the unexpected contact with the sheet and Veronica bursts out laughing below him. He starts laughing too after realizing what’s happening.

“That’s what I forgot,” he says, pressing his forehead against hers. “To tether the sheet on all sides.”

She grins up at him, brushing her thumb against his cheek. “We never did _that_ when we were 13.”

“Guess we skipped forward a couple of years.”

“Know anyone out here with a bright yellow Xterra?”

He smirks, leaning down to give her a quick kiss. “Come on, let’s dig our way out of this mess before it starts to feel like we can’t breathe.”

“And then what?” she asks, making no move to remove her leg from off his hip.

“And then we pick another year from our youth to relive.”

“Can I vote for year 17? Before the breakup?”

He leans down to kiss her again. “I had a feeling you might ask for that.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apologize for the shorter chapter this week. My seasonal allergies have left me with a nice relentless headache the past couple of days, reducing my normal writing time. Gotta love (by which I mean hate) when the weather starts getting colder. lol


	8. Chapter 8

They end up cleaning up the fort. After tossing aside the top sheet and settling back into their mountain of pillows, they both realized that trying to act like they were 17 again really wasn’t going to work out. They wouldn’t be able to stop their make-out session like they had at that age and they both agreed that sex was too big of a step to take right now. She didn’t want to use it as an avoidance mechanism like they used to, and Logan had agreed, even though his hard-on pressed against her thigh had other thoughts.

So, they set to work returning all of the pillows to all of their regular homes, before deciding to enjoy the nice, warm, sunny day outside by the pool. Logan notices that it doesn’t take Veronica long to fall asleep on her lounge chair out in the sun. And he lets her sleep, knowing full well she hasn’t been getting enough of it lately. He finds an old paperback tucked away on one of the shelves in the living room and settles down with it outside in the lounge chair next to hers. He even closes his eyes for a bit, chasing away last night’s nightmares with thoughts of her mouth pressed against his.

It’s late afternoon when she stirs again, a sleepy smile on her face as she yawns beside him. “Have I completely wasted our entire day?”

“Not at all,” he tells her.

She stretches her arms overhead and sits up into a seated position, tucking her right leg under her. “Any opposition to an early dinner since I slept through lunch?”

“No opposition here,” he smiles. “Just happy to see you’re getting your appetite back.”

She shrugs, stretching out her back again. “My stomach doesn’t feel as twisted in knots out here as it has the last couple of days. But maybe that just means I’ve gotten too good at avoiding things.”

“You’ll deal with it when you’re ready.”

She huffs. “Yeah, that sounds healthy.”

“Says the woman with a psychology degree.”

She laughs a little, pushing a hand through her hair. “Logically, I know people process trauma in different ways. I know exactly what I’m doing out here hiding away from it all. It’s just easier to pretend like I don’t. To pretend like you’re not a part of my coping mechanism. To pretend like you haven’t always been.”

“I’m your solid ground, huh?”

She nods. “My softest security blanket. Although I did detect some stubble earlier with the kissing. Less soft than I remember.”

Logan laughs, scratching at his chin. “Guess I forgot to add razors to my shopping list.”

“Keep it,” she says, smirking at him. “It’s sexy.”

He grins at her, setting the book aside on a wicker table next to his lounge chair. “Well, if you’re expecting an early dinner, I better start cooking. Help me bring things down to the cabana?”

She eyes the set of stairs that lead down to the beachside patio. “We’re doing this all in one trip. I’m not walking back up those stairs.”

“Do you plan to sleep down there?” Logan laughs.

“Listen, that’s a future me problem. Honestly, for as extravagant as this place is, your family couldn’t invest in an escalator or cliffside elevator or something?”

“I’ll look into it for the next big renovation.”

“Just jack up your rent price to pay for it. Problem solved.”

“Don’t think it works that way.”

“Not with that attitude it won’t.”

She stands up, walking around the edge of the pool to look out at the view of the ocean.

“This place has got your ‘09er house beat,” she tells him.

“Yeah,” Logan agrees, pushing himself up and onto his feet to join her. “I’m sure my parents would have preferred to stay here, but that pesky L.A. pediatrician was getting suspicious.”

She shifts her gaze to look at him, looking like she’s just been sucker punched. He doesn’t bring up the stuff with Aaron a lot, and she knows it. He’s told her the occasional story, let her memorize all of his scars, but mostly he prefers to keep it all to himself. If he doesn’t talk about it, it doesn’t exist, right? Just like she’s doing now with Keith’s death.

“X-rays can be pretty telling,” he offers softly, keeping his gaze trained on the ocean.

Veronica steps closer to him, curling into his side. He hugs her back, almost getting choked up at the way she knows not to press him on it. She lets him share what he wants to, offering her comfort in return. He’s forgotten how well she knows him – _all of him_.

“That asshole didn’t deserve this type of view anyway,” she says.

“Because his movies weren’t that good?” Logan asks, teasing her with the comment she keeps making about this place.

“Among other things.”

He kisses the crown of her head. “Come on, let’s go get our food supplies ready.”

“Don’t forget the stuff for the s’mores,” she says, stepping out of his arms. “I’m not walking back up these stairs for them later.”

“I’m beginning to think I’m going to have to carry you back up them after we eat.”

Veronica laughs. “Look, I can tell you’ve been working out, but I’m not sure you’re quite prepared for that kind of exertion.”

“You can’t weigh _that_ much,” Logan protests, following her back into the house. “In fact, I know you don’t. I carried you to bed last night.”

“Honey, the set of stairs in this house have got nothing on that cliffside adventure course out there.”

He bursts out laughing, not sure if he finds her use of the pet name or her description of the outside stairs funnier. “Fine, fine, I won’t carry you. You can get the cardio workout in all on your own.”

“Or,” she starts, pulling open the refrigerator doors. “We could hire a helicopter to give me a lift.”

“You’re pathetic,” he laughs, digging through the grocery bags to pull out whatever they won’t be eating tonight.

“I’m weak and out of shape,” she says dramatically, tossing an arm over her face. “Law school supplies very little down time.”

“Elle Woods found a way.”

She snorts. “Elle Woods very likely had a professional trainer helping one _Reese Witherspoon_ look that way.”

“Do you want a personal trainer?”

She shakes her head, picking up the s’mores supplies. “I’ll stick with the chocolate.”

Logan laughs again. “For the record, you look great. You don’t need one.”

She smiles at him. “Again, with the flattery. You trying to get back in my pants, Echolls?”

“All in good time, Bobcat.”

She blushes at the nickname, knowing the last time he used it, save for the other night when he let it slip out, she had been riding him – driving them both to orgasm. Fuck, he wants her to be straddling him again. He misses sex with her. He’s missed…all of her.

“Okay, I think this is all I can carry,” she says, turning back around to face him, her arms full of supplies.

“You’re going to drop some of that.”

“No, I’m not.”

“If our dinner ends up in the sand –”

“We’ll call a helicopter to air lift us in some food.”

“There’s a fun business venture idea. Think rich people would be into paying for that?”

“You’re the rich guy,” she says with a shrug, almost dropping the bag of marshmallows which she scrambles to get a better hold on. “You tell me.”

He pretends to think about it, testing the amount of food he feels comfortable carrying without dropping. “Nah, not worth it.”

“I’d shove you, but it might result in broken graham crackers.”

“And we can’t have that.” Logan stares at the sliding glass doors for a moment, trying to figure out how to open them. “Are you as flexible as you used to be?”

“Oh, now you’re really asking for it.”

He laughs. “No, I just – can you open the door with your foot?”

“I’m probably too short,” she mutters, eyeing the handle. “You try. Or use your hip!”

“This is ridiculous,” he says, still laughing while he tries to hip-check the door handle.

“I didn’t design the place.”

“I was very young when we moved here, I don’t think I was given much input.”

“So, you did actually live in this house for a while?” she asks. “I’ve been wondering.”

“Yeah, it wasn’t our main L.A. home, but this was home for a while.”

“Oh, you are so giving me the tiny Logan tour of the house later. Which bedroom was yours, did you have favorite hiding places, is there a growth chart hidden somewhere I can mock?”

“You, of all people, should not be mocking growth charts.”

“God, you’re so mean,” she laughs. “When I smack you later, you know why.”

“You’re the one who called yourself short 20 seconds ago.”

Veronica clucks her tongue. “I’m allowed to make fun of my own height. You, however, are not.”

“Guess I missed the memo about there being rules in regard to height jokes.”

Logan manages to get the door open with two fingers pushing on the handle. He ushers Veronica outside before he can lose his grip on their food and slides the door shut behind her. He leads her over to the stairs, regretting not being able to hold on to the railing as the incline steepens.

“This is the absolute worst design flaw I’ve ever seen,” she complains from behind him.

“And you lived in New York for three years.”

“Hey now, don’t go attacking my apartment. There was nothing wrong with it.”

“Bet it didn’t have a view like this.”

“Well…no, it had a view of the building next to mine. But that’s not a design flaw that’s just Manhattan for those of us on a budget.”

“You say that like I have no budget.”

“Literally, do you see where we are right now? You _own_ this place. Honestly, I’m surprised you haven’t moved here yourself.”

“Oh yes, because one man living in a seven-bedroom house by himself isn’t sad or anything.”

“So, invite some friends to join you. Dick would love to be able to bring women here.”

“I’m not turning this place into Dick’s Playboy Mansion.”

“You’d never be lonely.”

He grunts. “Right, cause hanging out with Dick and the women he picks up is all I need for a happy life.”

“Something else missing from your future sexcapades?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Kind of thought things were going somewhere with this petite blonde carrying an armful of s’mores supplies, but maybe I was wrong.”

“Logan –”

“Am I wrong?”

They make it the cabana and immediately move to dump all of their supplies on the patio table. With her arms now free, Veronica pokes at his arm.

“You need me to be happy?” she asks.

“Perhaps it’s more of a want than a need.”

She smirks at him. “That’s a lot of pressure to put on a girl, you know.”

“My wanting you?”

“Your needing me.”

“All right well, what about your wants and needs?” Logan asks, meeting her gaze.

She holds his eye contact for a moment before shifting her gaze down to their food pile. “Are you meaning that to sound sexual or is this just a general question about my happiness?”

“Either answer is acceptable here.”

She looks back up at him and sighs. “If I didn’t think I could find happiness in you, I wouldn’t be here right now.”

“Maybe it’s time we had that talk?” Logan asks, starting to rifle through their supplies.

“Which one?”

“The ‘where things went wrong’ talk.”

“So soon?” she asks, cringing. “And here I thought things were going so well avoiding that particular topic.”

“Well considering what we almost did earlier in our pillow fort, I think it’s time. I’m not sure how long either of us are going to hold out without sliding back into that particular habit, and we both agreed we wanted to talk first before that happened.”

She sighs again. “Skipping ahead to year 19, huh? Maybe we should eat first.”

“Yeah we can do that,” he says, examining the grill.

“Promise me something?”

“Okay…”

“We won’t freeze each other out the rest of the weekend if things get too ugly.”

“V –”

“The way we used to fight, Logan…” she trails off, shaking her head. “I just got you back in my life. I don’t want to lose you again, especially not in the same week I lost my dad.”

“I just want to talk about it, Veronica. I don’t want to fight with you. Your presence in my life has also been truly missed.”

She slips up against his side again, her arms bracketing his waist as she stares down at the grill with him. “Food first. Then we talk.”

* * *

Logan watches her lick the melting chocolate off her fingertips, letting his mind drift back to his earlier thoughts from this morning about her going down on him. She catches his eye and seems to register where his mind is at because she starts overexaggerating the gesture just to egg him on more.

“You’re cruel,” he tells her.

She laughs, being sure to release her thumb from her mouth with a wet pop for extra emphasis.

“Tease,” he complains.

“Messing with you has always been a hobby of mine,” she smirks.

“Yeah, I seem to recall that.”

“Like you were any nicer to me,” she retorts, settling back against her lounge chair.

“We were an equal amount of evil, all right? Let’s go with that.”

She laughs, shaking her head as she stares at him through the firelight. He knows it’s time for this talk. _The_ talk, as it were. But he has no idea where to start. He’d rather just watch her laugh and make innuendo-filled gestures across the firepit at him. He would _much_ rather get her back upstairs and _act_ on those gestures. Or maybe down here is fine? It’s not like there’s anyone else around…

But her smile fades the longer he watches her, and she eventually turns her head away to look out at the ocean. The sun is just nearly gone from the sky, the two of them having managed to drag out their early dinner long enough to continue to avoid this discussion. But there’s nowhere else to run from it now. Certain things have to come up. It’s time.

“So, do you want to bring her up or should I?” Logan asks, holding his breath.

“Bring who up?” she asks out to the ocean.

“Come on, you know. She-who-must-not-be-named.”

“Madison,” Veronica deadpans.

“Well yeah. She was a factor in our demise, was she not?”

“Only because you made her one.”

“Veronica –”

“I’m sorry,” she cuts him off, shaking her head again and turning back to look at him through the fire. “ _I_ made her one.” She drops her gaze to her clasped hands in her lap. “But you have to see it from my perspective. You’re the one who broke up with me. And I was...miserable. And you ran off to Aspen and slept with Madison of all people and then lied to me about it.”

“And that was the final nail for you?”

“You know how hard it is for me to trust people. I was tired of having my heart broken by you Logan, I was tired of all of the lying.”

She draws her knees up into her chest and he waits for her to say something else before he risks turning this into a version of Ross and Rachel’s infamous ‘we were on a break’ fight.

“Honestly, looking back,” she starts again. “I know I was mad about your choice in drunken rebound and I know I let that get to me more than I should have. It’s just…there was something about standing in line to buy lingerie I had planned to surprise you with and her coming up to me and flaunting around in my face the type of lingerie you had _preferred_ in Aspen with her. Finding out like that… _from her_ …if you had just told me about it when I came over that night we got back together –”

“If I told you about it that night, we wouldn’t have gotten back together. You would have been just as pissed that it was Madison whether she was the person who told you about it or not.”

“It was the lying, Logan. That was the final nail. It had nothing to do with her.”

“Bullshit. You asked me if I had been with anyone during our time apart. I told you that I had, and you seemed okay with it. And then you found out who it was, and you couldn’t get past it. You were so sure I had chosen her specifically to hurt you. You wouldn’t even let me explain how drunk both of us were or how goddamn lonely and miserable I was feeling. I fucked up. I broke up with you and then regretted it big time. But I thought for sure you were done giving me chances. I never expected you to show up at my door and fall back into my arms after that. It had never been about hurting you. It was just my drunken ass trying to feel something again.”

She can’t meet his gaze anymore. She keeps her eyes focused out at the water rolling in waves against the shore, wiping at the tears that have started to form.

“You think I felt any better when you started dating Piz?” he asks, quietly.

“I wasn’t dating him to hurt you.”

“No?”

“He liked me. And he was a nice guy and he felt safe.”

“I thought you said yesterday that I used to make you feel safe.”

“Different kind of safe.”

“There’s more than one kind?”

Veronica turns her body back to face him. “Piz was safe as in nothing with him was ever going to be intense, he was never going to break my heart. And you? You made me feel safe, protected, loved. Until you didn’t.”

Logan scrubs a hand through his hair. “Okay, so, from your perspective, how did that change for you? Because I never stopped loving you. I never stopped trying to protect you and keep you safe.”

She curls herself into a ball on the lounge chair and he bets she wishes she had that cardigan of hers down with her now. “Even if you weren’t trying to hurt me by sleeping with her, it still hurt me. But it was the lying, Logan. You lied to me that first summer we were together about what you and Dick were doing and instead went around blowing up pools. You neglected to tell me you hired a bodyguard to follow me around and I thought I was being stalked. You lied about the entirety of your winter break and turned it into a way bigger issue than it needed to be. How hard was it to just come right out and tell me what happened? Did you honestly think you’d be able to keep Aspen a secret forever?”

“I wasn’t the only one keeping secrets. You were going around investigating this rapist case and lying to me about it. Pot meet kettle.”

She exhales a shaky breath. “Why do we suck at this? The whole communicating thing.”

“We’re doing it now, aren’t we?” Logan asks. “We sucked at it as teenagers but look at us being adults over here now. We’re withholding sex from each other until we figure our shit out. We never could have done that at 19. It was too much of our crutch for when things got hard.”

“It’s not just about the sex.”

“You want more than that?”

“I want –” she cuts herself off and unfurls from her ball to stand up. She walks to the edge of the patio and steps off into the cool sand on the beach.

Logan turns his body toward her from his chair. “What do you want Veronica?”

“You.”

She says it so softly, he’s not even sure if he heard her say it over the sound of the waves crashing against the shore.

“Me?”

She turns back around to face him, her arms crossed over her chest. “When things were good between us? I’ve never been happier. But I kept letting my trust issues and my fear about just how hard I had fallen for you get in the way. I loved you. So much that it terrified me, so much that I couldn’t even get the words out to tell you. And now I’m 28, and I’ve never felt that same intense kind of love again. Even with all of our baggage, I think you’re it for me. And all we’re managing to do with this conversation right now is get stuck in the same circular fight we were in nine years ago. Can’t we both just admit that we messed up and move on?”

He stares at her, at a loss for words. What does he say to something like that? How does he reciprocate everything that he’s thinking and feeling? They’ll never be able to come to a consensus on the Madison thing, but do they really need to? They’ve acknowledged its existence, acknowledged that they both screwed up. Nine years apart because they were both too stubborn to concede in this particular argument. All of that wasted time, and for what?

“Logan?” she asks quietly. “Say something.”

“I want you to say it.”

“Say what? Say that I’m sorry? Because I am, I’m sorry, for all of it and –”

“No,” he says shaking his head. “Not that. The thing you’ve never been able to say to me out loud.”

She wraps her arms around herself tighter, kicking one foot in the sand. “Logan –”

“Believe me, when I tell you that I’ve known. I could always feel it, in your gestures and your touches. And I never understood why you couldn’t say it, but I accepted it. But what I need from you now is to say it. Because I can’t, for whatever reason, shake you from my thoughts. I haven’t been able to for the past nine years. I was with Carrie, supposedly in love with Carrie, and still caught myself from time to time, thinking about how much I loved you. I don’t know what we were together, Veronica – a handful of failed attempts at a relationship. But like you said, when we were happy, we were _happy_. I mean…these past 48 hours have been bogged down by the overhanging shadow Keith’s death presents, but I also can’t remember feeling this happy at any point within the last nine years. Maybe we’re completely wrong for each other. We fight and we lie, and we let our trust issues get in the way. But I’m still in love with you. I can’t turn it off and I wouldn’t want to even if I knew how. And I just need to know if you feel the same way. Forget worrying about how it ended nine years ago, because that doesn’t have to be the end of it, the end of us. You chose me to help you get through this incredibly difficult thing that happened in your life and I’m here, I’m yours, even if you don’t love me –”

“Of course I love you, you idiot,” she cuts him off, pacing back over to him. The tears in her eyes glisten in the firelight. “How have I not made that clear? I’m in love with you. I’ve loved you since we were teenagers and I’ve never stopped. I lost my dad. I lost him and I never got to say goodbye and it made me realize I couldn’t have our story end the same way. You and I left things unfinished nine years ago and I wanted the chance to try and fix what we broke. So, when I saw you at the funeral, I dragged you away from it, taking both of us away from everything to just try and find some perspective. I don’t want any more regrets in life, Logan. And aside from not being there when my dad died, my biggest regret has always been giving up on you.”

He’s on his feet instantly, pushing her back into one of the supports that hold up the canopy over the cabana and praying they’re built stronger than their pillow fort. His mouth is on hers – taking, demanding, claiming.

_She loves him_.

She loves him and she wants him and it’s only been two days how is any of this real?

He pulls apart from the kiss, pressing his forehead against hers, both of them breathing heavy as they try and catch their breath after that.

“You left yourself with me,” Logan says softly, finally understanding what she meant when she uttered those words in the car yesterday.

“Now he gets it, folks. Give the man a prize.”

He dips his head and kisses her again, more languid and less frantic. His arms slip around her waist, pulling her away from the canopy support and up flush against him.

“Screwing things up with you has been my biggest regret too,” he says when he pulls away from her lips again.

“Glad we found some common ground to agree upon.”

“You know, this fight wasn’t nearly as bad as you made it out to be.”

“It’s been festering for nine years, I guess the thrill of it wore off.”

He kisses her again. “How are we getting back upstairs?”

“We aren’t. We live down here now. Think there are sharks in our giant bathtub?”

He laughs, brushing her hair out of her face as the breeze picks up around them. “God, I’ve missed you.”

“Me too,” she says, sliding her arms around his neck. “Glad that part is over.”


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't adjust your screens, this is me updating on a Tuesday after just updating on a Sunday! I took some vacation days off from work, because hey 2020 it's not like I'm going anywhere, so I got some extra writing done this week. And I could have just waited to post the next chapter next week but hey it's my birthday, I do what I want lol So my gift to you: some LoVe sexy times (with some angst at the beginning because this is me and I like making these two confess things ahem)

Logan watches her. Watches as she stands at the foot of the stairs staring up at the trek back to the house, a plastic bag with the remaining s’mores supplies slung over her arm. She had been so nervous to have this conversation with him and her nervousness had spread to him the longer she insisted on putting it off. And all in all, it had been fine. She seemed as tired of their fighting as he was. She seemed ready to just _be_ with him and he marveled at the concept. And he was determined not to lose her again this time.

“V?”

She drags her gaze away from the stairs to look over at him.

“Not to belabor the point, but just like that, all is forgiven?”

“Do you _want_ to keep fighting in circles playing hot potato with the blame?”

He shakes his head. “No. I just – if I had known it was going to be that easy, I would have called you years ago.”

She smiles softly at him. “I didn’t expect it to be. But I guess needing a person helps to melt all of that old anger away.”

“Oh, so now you need me,” Logan teases. “Was it my grilling skills? My ability to toast the perfect marshmallow?”

“It’s driving me 150 miles away from my father’s funeral and agreeing to put off your life to stay with me for five days. You think Piz would have done anything like that? Hell, or Duncan?”

He slips his arms around her waist, pulling her hips up against his. “I think Piz might have let you convince him to leave the funeral with you, but he wouldn’t have agreed to running away with you like this. Too impulsive for him, no matter how much he wanted to please you. Duncan would have tried to convince you to stay at the funeral, going on and on about how you’ll regret missing it, etc.”

“Can’t believe I ever thought he was right for me.”

“You came to your senses.”

“Not soon enough.”

Logan lets his thumbs slip under her shirt to brush against her skin. He feels her shiver at his touch. Fuck, he has got to get her back upstairs – they don’t even have to make it to the bedroom. The couch at The Grand had worked just fine on more than one occasion, no reason the living room couch here would be any different, or the kitchen counter, hell even just the floor…

“Am I sensing you have regrets about going back to Duncan in between our attempts at a relationship?” he asks, still brushing his thumbs against her back.

She nods. “He was still so hung up on Meg and I was…”

“Still so hung up on me?”

She nods again. “I told you, I’ve been in love with you for a long time.”

“Think senior year would have been any different if we had stayed together?”

“Meg would still be alive,” she says quietly.

“Whoa, hey don’t go there,” Logan tells her, flattening his palms out against her back and pulling her even closer.

“She would have been in the limo if it wasn’t for me and Duncan.”

“And if she hadn’t told the bus driver to leave the gas station without you, _you_ would be the one who’s dead right now.”

“Come on, you think Dick would let his best friend’s girl slum it on the bus?”

“Would you have gone with them if I wasn’t there?”

She meets his eyes and then shakes her head, dropping her gaze to his chest.

“In some weird cosmic way, Meg saved your life.”

“I know,” she says softly. “Just another thing that still haunts me.”

The nightmares. The dreams that pulled her from her sleep and made her call out his name. This was one of them. He’d never gotten her to talk about it before.

“Did I ever tell you about the worst 15 minutes of my life?” he asks.

She meets his gaze again, her eyes flashing with worry. She thinks it’s about Aaron. She doesn’t realize it’s about her.

“I heard about the bus crash,” he continues. “And all I knew at the time was that my friends, Dick, Beaver, Duncan, had been on it. That you had been on it. I thought that everyone I cared about was dead, everyone who actually gave a damn about me. I felt sick. Numb. Not all that different than I had that day I was willing to let the ocean consume me. And then Dick called me, and I felt like I really was going to vomit because this must be a hallucination, right? How was this possible? But he explained everything, rambled on and on about the limo. I kept trying to interrupt him and ask about you. Surely you had been in the limo because Duncan was. And then he told me that you had been on the bus.”

Her hands have slipped under his shirt now, locating the nearest scar and tracing over it – an old comforting habit of hers. It threatens to break him even faster.

“For 15 minutes, I thought you were dead,” Logan says, barely above a whisper. “I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think. Our story wasn’t supposed to just end like that. I was supposed to win you back. We were supposed to have more time.”

He looks up at the sky, trying to blink back the tears as the memory of that day overwhelms him.

“I’m right here, Logan,” Veronica says gently. “I’m okay. We have all the time in the world.”

It reminds him of last night when he’d told her he had almost died, and he had to keep telling her that he was okay now. Their combined amount of near-death experiences was really not okay.

“When Dick finally got my attention again, telling me that you had showed up on Weevil’s bike…” he trails off, shaking his head. “I’m not a religious man, but that day I felt like I had to be.”

“Logan –”

“It sucks that Meg died, that all of those people died, but fuck, Veronica, if that had been you –”

Her head is pressed against his chest now, the bag of leftover s’mores ingredients hits his hip as her arms wrap around him, still under his shirt.

“I got off the bus, Logan. I got off the bus.”

One of his hands slips out from under her shirt to fist into the back of her hair, holding her head against him. He doesn’t often let himself think about that day, about those 15 minutes. It’s too much for him, even with the knowledge that she wasn’t on that bus went it over that cliff.

“How about this, okay?” she starts. “If we had stayed together after that summer, I wouldn’t have even gone on that field trip. I would have told my dad that I did, but really I would have been with you, hooking up in that big old empty house of yours.”

He can’t help but laugh into her hair. “Hooking up, huh?”

She hums. “It would have been the perfect cover plan for us to finally have sex. No one to interrupt us, no curfew to try and outrun.”

“No running off to sleep with Duncan instead,” Logan adds. “What was sex with him like anyway?”

“Cuddling was the best part.”

Logan laughs again. “He didn’t do it right.”

“No, he most certainly did not.”

“Fuck,” he sighs, resting his chin on top of her head. “I didn’t mean for that conversation to get so dark.”

“There’s a lot we’ve never talked about. It was just always easier not to.”

“Should we add unearthing all of our old emotional trauma to this weekend’s to do list?”

“Let’s just take it as it comes,” she replies. “I’m enough of an emotional wreck as it is right now.”

“Fair enough. Allow me to lighten the mood by changing the subject,” Logan starts, slipping out of her embrace and tugging her toward the stairs she’s been dreading. “Can we go back to this whole you were buying lingerie for me thing?”

She huffs, reluctantly trailing behind him as they start tackling the climb. “We had been joking around about hookers and I –”

“Wanted to look like one?” he supplies helpfully.

“No,” she says, smacking his back. “They were…tasteful.”

“Long silky nightgowns leaving much to the imagination?”

“No!” she smacks him again. “They were sexy. One was black, the other was purple. There was some lace. I don’t remember them exactly, Logan, it’s been over nine years.”

“You ended up not buying them, I assume?”

“Well, when Madison Sinclair pokes fun at your selections and tells you that your boyfriend wouldn’t like them, it sort of turns a person sour against the whole thing.”

“She doesn’t know a goddamn thing about what I like.”

“Yeah well, tell that to a young impressionable Veronica just getting into all of this sex stuff for the first time.”

“You thought you didn’t know me? Or what I liked? It’s sort of hard for a guy to fake arousal, V.”

“Just let it go, okay? I wasn’t thinking.”

He stops mid-climb and turns to look at her. “You didn’t need to buy lingerie for me. You did it for me all on your own.”

Veronica shrugs. “I wanted to surprise you. To apologize for assuming you’d been with a hooker at some point in your 19 years. Although Kendall did come close –”

“Stop,” he groans. “I never paid her for sex.”

“Did she pay you?”

He scoffs. “So now, I’m the hooker?”

“If that’s true, then I have to take back my previous response about never having slept with a hooker.”

“You’re ridiculous.”

“Keep climbing manwhore, you’re throwing off my momentum.”

“Okay ouch,” Logan says, turning back around. “I believe you’re confusing me with Dick.”

“Am I though? How many times have you thought about having sex with me today?”

Damn, she reads him too well.

“And that makes me a manwhore? Thought that just made me a man.”

“You’re _my_ manwhore if that makes you feel any better.”

“Please stop using that word.”

“I bet you’re picturing me in that non-descript lingerie right now, aren’t you?” she keeps teasing him. “All that black lace hugging my curves, sliding against your skin…”

“Okay, that’s it, you’re not climbing fast enough, get on my back.”

Veronica bursts out laughing. “What?”

“I intend to give you a piggy-back ride the rest of the way up the stairs, and then I plan to deal with the growing tightness in my pants you’ve just made worse.”

“Oh, you’re going to deal with it, huh?” she asks sliding her arms over his shoulders while she lets him hoist her legs around his waist from behind. “Should I give you and your hand some alone time in the shower?”

“Let me rephrase,” Logan starts, as the corner of the box of graham crackers pokes into his chest through the plastic bag. “ _You’re_ going to deal with it.”

Her laughter rings in his ear. “Are you asking me for a handjob? No, I’m sorry, ordering me to give you one?”

“No, not at all. I’m merely suggesting that we pick up where we left off in the pillow fort earlier. You remember. Your thighs bracketing my hips, my mouth at that spot on your neck, that breathy little way you say my name when you’re turned on.”

“You think you know me, huh? And what I like?” she challenges, still speaking right into his ear.

“I _taught_ you what you like.”

She scoffs at that.

“Am I wrong?” Logan asks.

She nips at his earlobe, tugging it between her teeth before placing a series of open-mouthed kisses down his neck. _Fuck_ , he will do her right here on these goddamn stairs if she keeps that up.

“No,” she hums against his skin. “You’re not wrong.”

“Fuck,” Logan curses when she starts sucking at his pulse point. “You’ve got to stop that before I miss a step and send us both rolling to our death.”

“You started it,” she says, licking her way back to his earlobe. “Bringing up lingerie as your big change in subject.”

“Listen, you started this hours ago when you mentioned having me in your mouth.”

“You’re so easy to mess with,” she laughs again.

“Oh, like I’m the only horny one in this relationship?”

Her lips brush against cheek, feather-light. “We’re in a relationship?”

Oh no, did he jump the gun here? Get too wrapped up in the teasing and the I love you’s and made an assumption she wasn’t ready to label yet?

“Well yeah, what would you call it?” he asks.

She slides down off his back as they reach the upstairs patio deck. She tugs on his arm, pulling him toward the house, a familiar, teasing glint in her eyes.

“Relationship works,” she tells him, leading him inside. “I always did like thinking of myself as your girlfriend.”

She really does know exactly what to say to him, doesn’t she? Knows how much he loves her being his.

They get as far as the couch before she’s pushing him to sit down, wordlessly crouching down between his legs, the plastic bag dropped somewhere near the door. She tugs on the hem of his shirt and he follows her guidance, pulling it off over his head. She leans forward on the balls of her feet and starts to tease him, kissing and licking his stomach, looking him in the eyes. He maintains her gaze, watching her pull his dick free from his pants. She moves her head down, stroking him with her hand while kissing his groin and thighs.

“Do you want me to taste you?” she purrs against his skin. “See if I still remember what you like?”

His hands tangle into her hair for encouragement.

“Oh yes,” Logan growls. 

Veronica grins and starts with the head of his cock while still holding and stroking him with her hand. She licks the tip running her tongue all around it, circling it. She runs her tongue up and down the length of his shaft, giving it a little kiss at the base. She does this a few more times before putting the head of it in her mouth and gently sucking. He groans, his fingers tightening in her hair. She takes more of him into her mouth, slowly going down as far as she can, swallowing the length of him down her throat.

“Veronica, fuck.”

While still grasping the bottom of his dick in her fist, she puts her lips against her hand and moves in unison, up and down. Veronica keeps working him over with the flat of her tongue, her fist adding an extra delicious friction. She looks up at him, catches him watching her. She loves it when he does that, when he watches her, has told him so on more than one occasion. In the moments before she gets him to break and his eyes slam shut with the force of it, he keeps them trained on her, occasionally catching her eye as she looks up at him, all because he knows it only spurs her on further.

She releases him from her mouth with a wet pop, dipping her head lower to gently suck on his balls. Her hand keeps stroking him and he starts chanting her name. She knows what he wants like no time has passed between them at all. When he starts saying her name like that, he wants to be inside of her. But he has the feeling she isn’t going to let him. Right now, she’s going to get him to come in her mouth.

Veronica licks and sucks her way back up his shaft, before she takes him fully into her mouth again. She picks up a rhythm with her sucking and the twisting of her hand, before she swallows him again and he comes down her throat. She pulls her mouth off of him and rubs at his thighs until he comes down from his high. He imagines she’s looking up at him, waiting for the moment when his eyes will lock back onto hers.

Slowly, Logan opens his eyes, staring down at her.

“How’d I do?” she asks, wiping at the corner of her mouth. “Do I still know you well enough? I’ve noticed you staring at my mouth all day.”

“Even better than I remembered. You kiss Piz with that mouth of yours?”

She groans, pushing herself to her feet and moving to sit beside him on the couch. “Please don’t talk about my ex while I have you naked in front of me.”

“Not naked yet,” he smirks, moving to pull his pants and boxers the rest of the way off. “That’s better. Now you,” he pauses, gesturing in her direction. “Are wearing far too many clothes. I must remedy that.”

Veronica stands up and pulls her shirt off over her head, sauntering away from him and toward the stairs.

“Well, are you coming?” she tosses over her shoulder as she shimmies out of her shorts and leaves them at the foot of the stairs.

Logan takes her in, in that matching black lace underwear set, remembering it must have been something she bought specifically for this weekend.

“Do you always think of me when you buy underwear?” he asks, following her over to the stairs. “Do you think I have some fetish for black lace?”

“You do,” she says with a smirk. “You always did your best work when I was wearing something like this.”

“You kept track?” he asks, following her up the stairs.

“And that surprises you?” she laughs.

“Only because you let Madison convince you that you didn’t know what I liked.”

“Again, another name I don’t want to hear while we’re in states of undress like this.”

“Pick a bedroom and I promise to stop talking.”

Veronica grins at him, tugging him by the wrist into the nearest one.

“You would pick the one room in the entire house with a twin sized bed,” Logan grumbles.

She shushes him, holding her index finger up against his lips. “I was promised less talking if I picked a bedroom.”

“So demanding,” he laughs, scooping her up in his arms and gently tossing her down onto the bed. “Remind me to add the sheets in this room to the ones we need to wash before the new tenants move in.”

“Might as well just make a mental note to wash all of them. Just in case.”

He laughs again, working at unhooking her bra and pulling it off of her. “You’re right. I forgot who I was dealing with, Bobcat. And it’s only Thursday.”

He rolls her left nipple between his thumb and forefinger. “Now relax and let me show you what _I_ remember.”

Logan bends his head and captures her right breast with his mouth, tweaking her nipple with his teeth while he continues to manipulate her left breast with his fingers. She arches her back into him, already purring in satisfaction. He trails his mouth over her ribs and down her stomach, chasing away the lace fabric of her underwear with his lips as he pulls them down off of her. He kisses back up over her hipbone, before spreading her apart with two fingertips.

Fuck, she’s wet. He can see her arousal for him clearly as he drags an index finger through her folds. He can feel it as he drags the moisture upwards to circle it around her clit. She shivers under his touch, her hips lifting up to meet his movements.

Oh, he is so going to enjoy this.

Logan repeats the path his index finger just made with his tongue, dragging it up through her folds and circling her clit. He does it again, and again, watching her fists ball into the sheets on either side of her. He focuses in on her clit, sucking on it, flicking his tongue against it in sharp little movements. She’s moaning, those short little breaths, as he edges her closer and closer. He switches back to the long licks along her slit again, always stopping to circle to her clit. She cries out when he switches his pattern. She’d been close and he’d denied her that release, drawing out the build up longer.

He curls two fingers inside of her, the sloppy wet sound of her arousal filling the room as he pumps them inside of her.

“Logan. Fuck. _Fuck._ ”

He goes back to sucking and flicking her clit with his tongue again, his wrist picking up a steady rhythm of driving his fingers inside of her. Her fists abandon the sheets and twist through his hair, holding him against her – right where she wants him, right where she _needs_ him. The next stroke of his fingers pulls her over the edge and she’s arching her hips up into him, moaning deep in her throat, cursing as she comes down from it.

When she finally pushes herself up onto her elbows to meet his gaze, he mimics her earlier words and actions, wiping her arousal from the corner of his mouth. “How’d I do? Do I still know you well enough?”

“You kiss all your girlfriends with that mouth?” she asks, still out of breath.

“Only the ones I like.”

She snorts and tugs on his hair still threaded through her fingers, guiding him on top of her.

“Again I say, you picked the only twin sized bed in the house,” Logan complains.

“Relax, I plan to keep you on top of me for the next couple of minutes.”

“Only a couple of minutes? How fast are you?”

She huffs. “Did I say that you could talk yet?”

“You’re hot when you’re bossy.”

She shakes her head, pulling his head down toward hers so she can kiss him. He’s missed this – her teasing, their give and take for control. He could do this with her all day if she’d let him.

Veronica snakes a hand between them, wrapping it around his dick and stroking him until he’s fully hard again. She pulls apart from their kiss and locks eyes with him as he takes over, guiding himself into her slowly, giving her time to adjust to his size. She mewls as he stretches her, filling her, moaning when he bottoms out.

“Tell me what you want, Veronica,” he says, rocking his hips into her slowly.

She moves her hips in time with his, seeking the friction. “I want you to move.”

“Off of you?” he asks teasingly, starting to pull out of her completely.

“The opposite of that,” she says, sliding her hands down his back and cupping his ass.

Logan grunts, thrusting back into her and making her gasp.

“Oh, so that’s what you want,” he smirks, pulling out slow and thrusting back into her fast.

She whimpers out a yes, and he keeps up the torturous pace until the feeling of her nails digging into his back becomes too much. He picks up his speed and her grip on him loosens, relaxing back into the mattress and giving in to his control. The breathy little moans are back, and her eyes slip closed as she gives in to the sensation.

He dips his head, finding the sweet spot on her neck with his mouth. His teeth bite and suck at her skin while he keeps thrusting into her at a quicker and quicker pace. She’s clenching around him and oh my god he’s not going to last. She feels so damn good, but she’s not there yet, she’s stuck hovering near the edge.

“Veronica,” he grunts out her name. “I need you to touch yourself.”

He thinks he notices a flicker of a smirk pass across her lips and she slips one of her hands between them to rub at her clit. But the smirk is gone as her mouth opens into an ‘o’ shape and her moaning gets louder. They work together to send her over the edge again and she comes for him, screaming his name. It doesn’t take him much longer to follow, and he comes cursing around her name with his release.

He flops down on top of her, his head in the crook of her neck.

“Regretting the size of the bed yet?” he asks between pants.

“We’ll move to a new one,” she says, trying to regulate her breathing as well. “Eventually.”

“I forgot how good we were at that. Where did we ever settle on going pro?”

“The Olympics were considering recruiting us, but they were worried it just wouldn’t be fair to the other teams.”

He laughs, skimming a hand up her side. “Have I mentioned lately how much I’ve missed you?”

He feels her laughter rumble from underneath him. “Maybe once or twice.”


	10. Chapter 10

When he wakes up, he realizes that he’s in yet another one of the seven bedrooms in the house. Not the room he picked out, or the one Veronica had claimed for her own, or even the one where their evening had started with the twin-sized bed. The night comes back to him, the more he comes to – their multiple rounds of sex, her determination to mark her territory in every room.

“Didn’t nickname her Bobcat for nothing,” he mumbles to himself, stretching his arms over his head.

She isn’t in bed beside him and he wonders if she got up to make breakfast again.

Logan scrubs his hands over his face, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. He can still smell her on his fingers, bringing back the mental image of her last orgasm of the night where she got off riding his hand. She was going to be the death of him, he was sure of it. But oh, what a way to go.

He cleans himself up in the nearest bathroom and heads downstairs to find her nursing a cup of coffee. He slides into the same high-top chair he’d selected yesterday, and she wordlessly pours him a mug of coffee and passes it to him.

“No big breakfast this morning?” he asks, teasingly.

“I haven’t been up long enough,” she yawns.

“You walking okay this morning?”

She gives him a fake laugh and wads up a dish towel to chuck at him.

“Let me guess,” Logan starts, catching the towel before it hits his face. “Cuddling was the best part with Piz too.”

She glares at him over her shoulder as she pulls open the refrigerator.

“I don’t blame you,” he says, taking a sip of his coffee. “Once you’ve had the best it’s hard to compete.”

“Is it possible that I made your ego bigger than it already was last night?”

He chuckles, taking another sip. “Am I wrong?”

“Do you really need me to say it?” she practically whines, pulling the carton of eggs out of the fridge. “You need more validation than what I gave you last night?”

He shrugs. “It’s always nice to hear it.”

“You’re an asshole.”

“Not the compliment I was looking for.”

She rolls her eyes at him. “Want an omelet?”

“Sure, that sounds good.”

She goes back into the fridge for more supplies.

“If you say it, I’ll stop harassing you,” Logan tells her.

Veronica sighs, setting down more ingredients on the counter. “Fine. You, Logan Echolls, are the best sex I’ve ever had.”

He shoots her a shit-eating grin. “See, was that so hard?”

“Yes.”

He laughs again, lifting his cup for another sip. “For the record, you’re my best sex too.”

She holds a hand up to her chest and pretends to get choked up. “This…this is a really big moment for me. There are so many people I’d like to thank.”

“Now who’s the ass?” he laughs, chucking the towel back at her.

She smiles at him, sliding out of the way of the flying towel, and turning around to crack the eggs into a bowl.

“A guy could get used to this,” he tells her.

“The sex or the homemade breakfast?”

“The combination of both.”

“Well, good thing we’ve managed to stumble into another relationship.”

“Stumbled into it, huh?”

“I didn’t come back to Neptune with _plans_ to snatch you back up. It’s been the only good thing to come out of this trip.”

This trip? That makes all of this seem temporary. He realizes she still hasn’t told him where she plans to live now. He remembers her saying something last night that had made it seem like she had officially given up on New York.

“You were speaking about your NYC apartment in past tense last night. Have you made a decision about leaving there?”

She doesn’t respond right away, the only sound being the clanking of kitchen utensils as she prepares their breakfast. She slips the first omelet out of the pan and carries it over to him, flattening her palms out on the island and drawing her shoulders up to her ears.

“I can’t keep living there. Even after Piz and I broke up and he moved out, that place was still…our place. I could move to a new apartment, but New York isn’t home. It’s never going to be home.”

“So, you’re staying in Neptune?”

She shrugs, pushing away from the counter and moving back over to the stove. “I’m homeless. I can’t live in dad’s house. I can’t be surrounded by his stuff, reminded of him every day. I guess I could see if Wallace or Mac want a roommate.”

“You seem to be forgetting the option sitting right behind you.”

Veronica turns back around, spatula in hand. “You want me to move in with you?”

“Makes the sex part easier, I’d say. The homemade breakfast too.”

“Don’t you think it’s too soon for that?”

“Veronica, it’s not like we just met two days ago. We’ve known each other for 16 years.”

“Nine of which we spent pretending the other person didn’t exist.”

“Subtract out the nine if you must, and we’ve known each other for seven years. That’s still a long time.”

“We’re not the same people we were at age 12,” she tries to argue.

“And thank god for that.”

She turns back to the stove, slipping her omelet out of the pan. “Look, I just – I don’t want to mess this up by moving too fast. And living together? That’s a huge step.”

“All right so, compromise. Stay with me while you look for your own place. And if you end up never actually finding a place, AKA you decide you don’t actually want to live apart, then it wasn’t too fast of a step.”

“How do you do that?”

“Do what?”

“Know exactly what to say to convince me?”

“Seven years of Veronica experience, give or take.”

She sighs, turning off the stovetop and carrying her plate over to the island to join him.

“I don’t think Mac is going to be too happy with me,” Logan mutters, cutting into his breakfast.

“What makes you say that?”

“She warned me about this. That if I asked you to stay in Neptune, you would. She seems to think you belong far away back in New York.”

She groans outwardly stabbing her omelet with unnecessary force. “I belong where I want to belong. And if that place is back in Neptune, California, then so be it.”

Logan cocks his head, looking at her curiously. “Is there some bad blood there?”

She shakes her head, almost vigorously. “Just forget about it.”

“Did you and Mac have a fight?”

“Not Mac, my dad. Please just…drop it.”

Oh, so she still won’t go there. Whenever there is. He has the story in pieces – she didn’t make it back in time before he died, they’d argued the last time they spoke, that argument potentially had something to do with her moving back home? He wishes she would just tell him instead of letting it fester. It took nine years for time to outweigh the anger between the two of them. He doesn’t want her to have to wait that long to make peace with her father.

“I just want to check in here,” he starts slowly. “You’re not…you’re not just using all of this – the sex, the reconciliation – as an avoidance mechanism for not actually talking about what’s bothering you, are you?”

She’s quiet. And that terrifies him. He can’t handle any of this having been faked or fabricated. Can’t handle any part of it simply having used him as a distraction. But he knows her, doesn’t he? Knows when she’s being manipulative and when she’s being genuine. This had all felt like genuine Veronica to him. But now he’s almost not so sure. Things were happening so fast –

“All of it is real, if that’s what you’re asking,” she says softly.

She pushes the food around her plate as though she’s suddenly lost her appetite.

Real is good. Real is genuine. But he needs more.

“Not a distraction?” he prompts.

She sets her fork back down on the island. “You _know_ this whole thing started as a distraction two days ago. I told you as much. I was looking to find myself again, so I didn’t have to deal with who I’ve become. I didn’t expect things between us to be so easy – for us to just fall back into this rhythm we lost years ago. I didn’t expect last night to happen so quickly. But I don’t regret it, if that’s what you’re asking. If you feel like I’m using you, I’m sorry, that wasn’t my intention. The age-old war between us just seemed a lot easier to patch up than the one I’ve been fighting with myself.”

So he _was_ the distraction. But not in the negative way his momentary panic had almost led him to believe.

“I’m sorry, it’s just that – and don’t yell at me, okay – but you’ve never been this open with me. About anything. You shut down whenever something about your dad comes up, but you’ll gladly dig into the nitty details about our shared past.”

“You and I are easier to talk about,” she says softly. “I mean you’re here and you’re…mine.”

He feels his breath hitch in his throat. He remembers possessive Veronica. The little touches in the Hearst cafeteria when she caught another woman staring at him. The way her grip on his hand would tighten when they were out and walking past other women her insecurities felt threatened by. It was like she could never let herself believe that he was hers and only hers and he wasn’t going to leave her for someone better. Even though _she_ was his someone better.

But she’d never been so vocal about it. The “I love you” last night, the use of the word “mine” to describe him. Her love language had always been touch – all the physical stuff, marking her territory, _Bobcat_. To hear the actual words from her…he’s a fan of grown up Veronica.

Logan reaches for her hand. “I’m not trying to rush you; I need you to know that. If Sunday hits and you still don’t want to talk about your dad or whatever else it is that’s bothering you, that’s fine. And other than this newfound ability we’ve found to actually communicate with each other, you’re not so different from the girl I fell in love with back in high school. Whatever happened…don’t be so hard on yourself, Veronica.”

“You love me,” she nearly whispers. “It’s harder for you to see how messed up I am.”

He squeezes her hand. “Like I’m such a saint? Like there’s ever been a period of my life where I’ve had any amount of my shit together?”

“You seem pretty together now. And here I am trying to waltz back into your life and make everything complicated again.”

“What’s complicated about it? We’re in a relationship. So far, the strongest one we’ve ever been in.”

That gets her to laugh. “We have a terrible track record if these two days are already topping the multiple months we were together.”

“We’re better at the communicating now. That helps.”

She rubs her thumb over the back of his hand. “I just…I don’t to want fuck this up this time, Logan. I want more than a summer with you, more than half a school year.”

“Whatever it is that you’re mad at yourself for,” he starts. “I can guarantee you, it’s not going to scare me away. I’m in this thing. And I’m not letting you get away again.”

She brings the back of his hand up to her lips and kisses it. He lets his hand linger against her face, stroking over her cheek.

“Want me to heat up your omelet?” he asks.

She shakes her head, looking down at the plate. “Lost my appetite.”

Logan kisses the top of her head as he stands up to put his empty plate in the dishwasher. He starts cleaning up the kitchen, shushing her when she tries to protest. Needing the distraction from it all or not, she’s the one who needs to be taken care of right now. And he will happily do it for as long as she lets him.

“In the interest of keeping all communication honest?” she starts when he walks back over to collect her plate. “I lied to you earlier.”

He pauses at the sink and turns back around to look at her. “About what?”

“Not knowing where my mom is.”

He exhales a sigh of relief, glad the lie hadn’t been anything about the two of them. “You’ve spoken with her?”

She shakes her head, fidgeting with the paper napkin in front of her. “I uh – I dusted off my P.I. skills and ran a background check on myself after I started applying for law firms and the first one brought up my no sex – sex tape with Piz. I didn’t want to be caught off guard by anything else like that – didn’t want to be sneak attacked into talking about Lilly.”

“And you found Lianne.”

She nods. “She’s got this whole other life. New husband, new kids. I don’t know if they’re her step-kids or if they’re…”

“Your half-siblings,” Logan finishes for her when she trails off.

She nods again. “Were Dad and I that terrible? We weren’t enough to keep her sober or to even keep her from sticking around long enough to get sober. And now she’s got this brand new family while I haven’t heard a single word from her since she ran off with my college tuition money which I can pretty much guarantee you didn’t get used for rehab like she promised. She might as well be dead too. She’s dead to me anyway, just like I am to her.”

He leaves the remaining dishes in the sink to soak and moves back over to where she sits at the kitchen island.

“You don’t deserve any of this,” he tells her. “You should still have your family.”

She looks up at him, her chin cradled in her hands with her elbows propped up on the table. “I gave up on her a long time ago, Logan. Knowing how easily she gave up on me in return is just salt in the wound.”

He rubs a hand between her shoulder blades. “Have I offered yet? To be your family? Because I will be if you want me to.”

She smiles, her eyes slipping closed as she sinks into his touch at her shoulders.

“Same goes for you,” she tells him. “Is two days into a relationship too soon to start considering each other family?”

“Not if you’ve known each other since you were 12.”

Veronica opens her eyes to look up at him again. “Do you ever wish that you could go back and talk to your younger self? Tell them to make different choices, to not stress so much over the stuff that’s not even going to matter, to not get so mad at your parents for being parents?”

“My parents were barely parents, but I understand the sentiment, and yeah I do. I’ve got quite the pep talk prepared for that kid, should time travel ever get invented. What would you tell yourself and try to change?”

“I’d tell her not to go to Shelly’s party Sophomore year, first of all. And if she does decide to go anyway, she can’t get mad at our dad for grounding us for staying out all night when she refuses to tell him about the rape. Can you believe he died, and I still never told him about that? I’ve still only ever told you.”

She shakes her head, getting lost in some stray thought that haunts her from that night.

“It’s funny, isn’t it?” she continues. “How you and I used to trust each with such secrets, but we couldn’t communicate our own damn feelings?”

“I think trusting each other with this stuff, you with this secret, me with the Aaron stuff, that was our way of sharing our feelings. We let each other in at our most vulnerable.”

She nods slowly, shifting her gaze to look outside before bringing it back to him. “I’d tell her that Duncan doesn’t deserve a second chance, but Logan does.”

And that right there means more to him than she knows.

“Funny, my speech to my younger self involves telling him to stop being a 17-year-old jackass with a death wish and to enjoy his time with Veronica so she doesn’t have to give you a second chance.”

Veronica smiles at him. “We’re just bargaining with our younger selves for more time together, aren’t we?”

“I certainly wouldn’t complain.”

“What about Lilly?” she asks. “Can we save her? Could we have stopped her death from happening?”

He sighs, thinking back over a scenario he’s nearly overthought to death. “If I had found those tapes in the pool house before she did, she wouldn’t have tried to blackmail him with them. But I was so hot-headed back then, who knows what I would have done? Confronted her about them first? Confronted my dad? I can see that going really well for me – me trying to take a swing at him and me ending up with my head bashed in instead courtesy of Aaron Echolls. Dear old Dad.”

She reaches around the back of the high-top chair where she’s still sitting and rubs at his lower back. “If I had to choose between saving you and saving Lilly, I’d choose you.”

“Heh, you’re only saying that because the sex is so good,” Logan tries to make a joke, his voice thick with emotion, betraying him.

Veronica shakes her head. “You know that I’m not. She was my best friend for a lot of years, but as adults? I’ve just got this gut feeling that our lives were headed in different directions and we were going to drift apart eventually. But you…”

His fingers skim across the back of her neck when she trails off. “But you’re in love with me.”

She nods once. “But I’m in love with you.”

He kisses the top of her head. “Think she’d forgive us for falling for each other? Her best friend and her boyfriend?”

“Yeah, a part of me even thinks she would have cheered us on.”

He laughs a little at that. “I miss her. Not even in a romantic way necessarily, just…as my friend. As _our_ friend.”

“I do too. She’s been gone for like what, 12 years now? It never gets easier, does it? I’m always going to miss her. I’m always going to miss my dad.”

“I still miss my mom,” Logan tells her. “Losing people sucks. That’s why when you find someone who means the world to you, you hold on tight and do everything you can not to let go.”

“L? I’m sorry I let go for a while.”

He pulls her into his arms. “You came back. That’s what matters.”


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a sad one you guys, I made myself cry while writing it. If you don't need that today, I understand. But I'm pretty proud of how it turned out.  
> I listened to the River Flows in You by Yiruma a lot while writing this chapter if you want a nice background song for your reading.   
> Thank you, as always, for sticking with me and for all of your lovely comments every week. :)

He talks her into going back down to the beach. He’d been captivated by the sight of the waves after breakfast; it looked like the perfect day to go out. He had a spare wetsuit in the trunk of his car, and the property was stocked with a couple of extra surfboards. And truthfully, he needed a mental break from all of the emotional stimuli. The communication was great, but it was a lot to take in during the short amount of time they’ve been reunited.

So, after some shameless begging and promising to give her another piggyback ride back up the stairs, he convinces her to join him. She picks up the random paperback he’d been reading poolside the other day while she slept, some mystery novel that had been lying around, left behind by a previous tenant, and trails behind him back down the cliffside stairs.

“This reminds me of high school,” she says from behind him.

“The steps?” he asks, confused.

“No, me following you out to the beach to watch you surf.”

“You did that a grand total of one time. _Maybe_ two.”

“So?” she asks. “That was the last time I did this. In high school.”

“And you don’t even have your camera to entertain yourself this time, whatever will you do?”

She waves the paperback over his shoulder. “I intend to learn all about this mysterious shadow the main character of this book keeps seeing, leading her to believe she’s being stalked.”

“Want me to spoil the ending for you?”

“Don’t you dare.”

Logan glances back over at her, tossing her a cheeky grin. “Make bets on the ending now miss former P.I. Is she being stalked? If so, who’s the stalker?”

“You want me to predict the ending just from the book jacket?”

“ _And_ your extensive knowledge of all things mystery.”

She sighs. “You know how long it’s been since that was my life?”

“Just try. You’re not being graded.”

She shoves at his shoulder now that he’s safely stepped onto the beach and off of the death trap of those stairs.

“Is it weird to guess that the shadow is her own and she’s just running from herself?” Veronica asks.

“Do I detect some self-projecting there?” he teases.

She shoves him again. “Go away. Go enjoy your ice-cold water or whatever.”

“I mean I don’t think it’s _that_ cold, if you were interested in joining me…”

“I’ll join you in the hot tub later, how about that?”

“I thought you didn’t have a swimsuit with you?”

“Suddenly that’s a requirement?”

He gives her another cheeky grin before leaning over to kiss her cheek and heading out to the ocean with his surfboard. The waves are as good as they looked from up at the house. He catches more than his usual share of them, enjoying that limitless feeling he always gets in those moments where he’s gliding over the water.

After his latest wave ends up with him getting two nostrils full of water, Logan hoists himself back up to straddle the board and to just drift for a moment, enjoying the warmth of the sun. He takes in the view. The long empty stretch of private beach surrounded by cliffside mansions owned by who knows who. His perfect waves, rolling against the shore with an even, soothing cadence that always sound so much better in person than they do on those sound soother machines. His girl, Veronica, stretched out on a lounge chair she dragged down to the beach from the cabana, her nose in that mystery book.

It’s all so different from the day he sat on his board like this, willing to let the waves take him. Thankfully he hasn’t felt that lost or alone in years, but this right here? A whole new kind of peace. He makes a mental note to check the renter’s agreement to see how long of a lease the new tenants have signed on for. Maybe he won’t take on anymore renter’s after that. Maybe he’ll just move out here with her and they can hide away from it all together. Get that dog she keeps talking about. They’ll be far enough away from Neptune to be somewhere else, but close enough to go back and visit. If she even wants to go back. Maybe she’ll just make Wallace and Mac come visit her up here.

Logan’s so lost in his own reverie that he doesn’t notice the wave crashing in behind him and rocking him off his board. He laughs when he pulls himself back up, noticing the sound catch Veronica’s attention.

“Everything okay?” she calls out to him.

“It’s great,” he calls back. “Just keep reading.”

He sees her shake her head before tilting it back down toward the book. His little super sleuth. He should have known she’d get absorbed by that novel. It’s right up her alley. Or the old her, anyway. He’s still not entirely clued in as to how the FBI dream got replaced with law school. He expects she’ll tell him when she’s ready, whenever that will be.

Logan tries for a few more waves before deciding to call it a day and paddling back to shore. He lays the surfboard down in the sand next to Veronica’s chair and stretches out on his back on top of it, shielding the sun from his eyes by draping his forearms over his head.

“How’s the book?” Logan asks.

“I’ve worked this case,” she answers softly.

“Shadow stalkers?” he asks with a laugh.

“It was umm senior year of high school I think.”

He sits up, realizing that she’s being serious, and leans back with his hands digging into the sand as he listens to her.

“This woman came into the office, told me that she was being followed, and asked if my dad could help figure out who it was and get them to back off. Dad was out, working on another case, so I took down her information and told her we’d be in touch. I passed along her info, but dad could never get a hold of her. She came back about a month later, practically in tears. It had gotten worse. She had to change her phone number because she was getting too many hang up calls. Dad tried staking out her house, her job, but no one else ever showed up. And then he just lost track of her. He was following her to catch whoever else was following her and he said she just vanished. It haunted me for weeks. I kept waiting to see her face on the news, her body found who knows where, her stalker having gone too far. I never did. She may as well have been a ghost.”

“That’s awful,” he says quietly. “There are some real sickos out there.”

She nods, setting the book aside and tucking her legs up underneath her. “You know, everyone always thinks ‘oh a private investigator, all you do is catch cheating spouses in the act.’ And while yeah, that was a good portion of his cases, it wasn’t all of them. He’d get stuff like this too – stuff that makes your skin crawl. And I mean, between us? We solved Lilly’s murder, the truth behind the bus crash, the Dean’s murder, the campus rapist…we were a good team. We had different sources and when we pooled our information and actually worked together…we got shit done. But he didn’t want to acknowledge that. He didn’t want to acknowledge the number of cases we’d helped each other on during those three and a half years. Like it had been nothing more than a hobby to me.”

Oh, this is it. She’s talking about Keith willingly. Talking about, what he assumes anyway, was the beginning of their fight. He pushes himself up off the surfboard and sits down with her on the lounge chair. She’s curled herself up into a ball against the back of it, and he sits perched on the end, there for her if she needs him.

“I told him that I wanted to come back to Mars Investigations,” Veronica keeps talking. “That I missed investigating. That it was my name on the business too and I contributed to it while I was still a minor even, so why couldn’t I again now that I had college degrees? But he didn’t want me to. And that’s what we were arguing about the last time I spoke to him.”

Logan reaches out to her, placing a hand on her knee and rubbing his thumb back and forth across her kneecap.

“Let’s ease into that, okay?” he offers, gently. “Start at the beginning. How did the FBI get traded in for Columbia Law? What made you want to leave the lawyer life to become a P.I. again?”

She sighs, curling into an almost even tighter ball. “You don’t remember what happened? With the P.I. stuff?”

He winces. “Remind me?”

She presses her head back against the head of the chair, staring up at the few clouds currently occupying the sky. “You don’t remember the great Veronica Mars fuck up of 2007? How many lives were ruined or almost ruined because of me and my less than stellar investigating skills?”

“Did you miss the part a few minutes ago where you solved all those really big high profile murder cases?”

She looks back at him. “I put Wallace’s life in danger. I almost ruined Mac’s entire future getting her to hack into something for me she shouldn’t have. I lost my dad the sheriff’s election. I mean who wants a sheriff who can’t even control his own daughter, right? I lost you. Spent several weeks stressing that Gory was going to send his mob connections after you for that little scene you pulled in the cafeteria on my behalf. Almost considered sticking a tracking device on his car until I realized how fucking insane that sounded. Because isn’t that how I got everyone I loved into this mess? Digging where I didn’t belong?”

“You have a big heart, Veronica. You were only trying to help.”

“Help who? Myself? Some jerk films me fooling around with my boyfriend topless and sends it to the entire school and I respond by nearly ruining the lives of everyone close to me.” She shakes her head, wiping at the tears starting to form in her eyes and he hears the hitch in her voice. “I had to get out. I had to stop. Imagine me at the FBI with those kinds of resources? I’d be a monster.”

“Veronica, you know that’s not true.”

“At 19, I didn’t. Not at 20 or 21. There’s nothing like sitting in a psychology class and listening to your professor describe your own bullshit. I had to be done, Logan. For every person that I’d helped, how many others had I hurt along the way?”

His heart was breaking listening to her talk about herself like this. She was a good person with typically good intentions at heart. She never set out to hurt Wallace or Mac or her dad. Or hell, to even hurt him.

“So, law school?” he asks tentatively.

She sits up a little straighter, scrubs a hand through her hair. “It seemed like a good idea at the time. A cure-all almost. I could _actually_ help people as a lawyer. It seemed like the perfect solution – still in the criminal justice system, much more respected than a P.I…”

“It wasn’t everything you hoped it would be?”

Back into the ball she furls herself. “Turns out I’m still capable of ruining innocent people’s lives.”

He scoots closer to her on the chair, tugging on her arm until she shifts her weight to lean against him instead. He combs his fingers through her hair, working out the knots formed by today’s wind.

“What happened?” he asks her.

He realizes he’s still in his wetsuit and now she’s leaning against him in her dry clothes. But she seems unbothered by the ocean water seeping into her clothes, content just to have him there holding on to her.

“I thought I wanted to do this, Logan. The whole lawyer thing. Thought I could help people this way. Instead, I just ruined someone else’s life. Again.”

He nudges her temple with his nose. “Tell me what happened.”

“This case I worked as an intern,” she starts slowly. “I was helping the wrong side. But they don’t tell you that. When they ask you to look into financials and background checks, you do it. An internship at a big law firm like this? That’s your foot in the door. You take the grunt work and you do it well and you help the attorneys win their case. But when it’s over, and you find out this ridiculous lawsuit against some restaurant you’ve been researching for weeks was actually a pawn in a custody battle? That you just helped some vindictive mother who’s likely no mother figure at all close down her ex-husband’s restaurant and livelihood, taking away his steady income and causing him to lose custody of their five-year-old daughter? You kind of hate yourself.”

He huffs out a breath, having known plenty of parents like this in his life. Knowing full well that the reason his mother never tried to divorce his father was because Aaron would have made sure he won the custody battle. Won it not even because he genuinely liked his son and wanted him around but won it just to spite her. Hollywood? The Upper East Side? They were all the same. Money talked and those without it listened.

“You were just doing your job, Veronica. You can’t blame yourself for a custody battle you knew nothing about.”

“I know,” she says softly. “I know it was just one case. But it’s so much more than that. There’s always going to be cases like this, cases harder and tougher than this one. And I thought I was prepared to handle all of that, but it turns out I’m not. As a lawyer, you get assigned the team. Sometimes you’re helping the actual good guy, sometimes you’re helping the actual bad guy. And working for a firm, starting at the bottom, you don’t always get to pick your clients. Working as a state prosecutor would be no different, I mean sometimes the defendant is actually innocent, right? And then corporate law? Practicing any type of law that wasn’t criminal? I would lose my damn mind. But there’s a certain freedom with P.I. work. Yeah, it’s a lot of cheating spouses and seedy motels, but then there’s that other stuff. Getting to the bottom of a case, solving the puzzle, not taking sides – well okay I suppose your client is paying you so you should probably take their side but with the other stuff it’s about speaking for the victim.”

Logan skims his hands down her back. “That sounds like your FBI dream, V. Not the P.I. stuff. Do you want to apply to the academy? Become an agent? I’m sure you’re not the first person to get through law school and realize it wasn’t the right fit after all.”

She shakes her head against his chest. “I don’t know. I don’t know. I just – I wanted to come home. But my dad didn’t want me to come back. Not because he didn’t miss me or anything, because he did – he made that very clear – but because he wanted better for me than this town, than Neptune. ‘You have an Ivy League law degree, Veronica. Don’t waste it slumming around this stupid old town with your dad. Go out there and use it, make something of yourself. You deserve it. You deserve more than this corrupt town who will only ever see you as the ex-sheriff’s trouble-maker daughter and the best friend to the late Lilly Kane. Think of the type of career you could have. And the money, Veronica. Wouldn’t it be nice to buy name brand cereal again?’”

She wipes at her eyes, but he can tell she isn’t done getting this off her chest. So, he waits for her to regain her composure, keeps rubbing circles into the small of her back with his fingertips.

Veronica continues. “I told him that I didn’t care about any of that. That I had changed my mind about the life I thought I wanted for myself and that I was allowed to do that. And then…then he asked if this change had anything to do with my recent breakup with Piz and I lost it. I started yelling at him. Who did he think I was? Has he ever met me? When have I ever made any big life decision revolving around a boy? I transferred to Stanford _for me_. I got into Columbia _for me_. This was about me being homesick. I even went as far as to tell him that he if he didn’t want me coming back to work at his precious Mars Investigations, I would come back and open my own competing agency. Like I’m fucking Vinne Van Lowe or some shit.”

She’s full-on sobbing now, trying to keep the story going through her tears. He doesn’t know what else to do besides continue to hold her and let her get it all out there. He can feel his own tears starting to sting in his eyes and he just wishes he could make this all better for her. Wishes he could take away all of this pain and give her the life she actually wants.

“That was three weeks ago. I haven’t spoken to my dad in 21 days and I never will again.”

Logan’s fists tighten in her shirt and he feels himself start crying. For the life she lost. For the life trembling in his arms right now.

“The – the last thing I ever said to him was ‘fine, see if I care’ like some bratty teenager. And then he said ‘fine’ and we both hung up. Hadn’t heard from him. Didn’t try to reach out. And then Monday I get this call from the hospital and I let it go to voicemail because I recognized the area code and didn’t want to deal with anything Neptune. It took me two hours to listen to that voicemail. That voicemail where they told me my dad was there and could I please call them back as soon as I get this. It was like my world just bottomed out. Nothing mattered anymore. I started bargaining with the universe to just keep him alive and I’ll become the big, fancy New York lawyer he wants me to be. And then I couldn’t get a flight. And then I finally got one and it was delayed. And then after quite possibly the world’s longest layover in Chicago, and the most excruciatingly slow taxi driver in the history of the planet, I made it to the hospital just in time to witness them call time of death.”

“Veronica –”

“I didn’t get to say goodbye, Logan. My dad died with us being pissed at each other. That’s how we left things. That’s why when I saw you – when we left each other nine years ago pissed at each other – I couldn’t handle that being the end for us too. I couldn’t let you die without letting you know that I loved you.”

He doesn’t think he could possibly be holding her any tighter, but damn if he doesn’t try.

“Ronica,” he starts, his voice breaking around her name. “I’m not dying on you, okay? I’m here, I’m right here. You have me, baby, you have me.”

He’s not sure if he’s ever referred to her as ‘baby’ before, but there’s no time to dwell on that now. She probably won’t even register that he called her that for a couple of days at least and will then proceed to tease him mercilessly when she realizes. And he looks forward to the teasing, to seeing her face light up with happiness again. Because this, right now, is destroying him.

She’s in so much pain. Years culminating on each other, blaming herself for past and present wrongs. Too much stress over a career path she wished she hadn’t taken, although it doesn’t sound like she’d be much happier at the FBI at this point. This big blowout with Keith being her last and final interaction with him. All the transportation in the world giving her its least amount of effort to get her back to her father’s bedside in time.

And she’s letting herself feel it all at once – clinging to him, sobbing so hard her whole body is shaking in his arms, the front of her clothes now soaked through from his wetsuit. He doesn’t know what to do, what to say. So, he just holds her. His girl. His Veronica.

He doesn’t know how much time has passed before she starts to calm down. He would hold her out here on the beach all night if she needed him to, but she’s already slipping away from him, tugging at the hem of her now wet t-shirt and laughing a little at the sight.

“Sorry about that,” he says softly. “Hazards of dating a surfer.”

She meets his eyes, a flicker of a smile on her lips before she looks back down at her shirt and sighs. “Do you ever feel like your life is spiraling out of your control and you’re powerless to stop it?”

He’d been there. The OD’s. That day sitting out in the ocean. He knows what that feels like. He hates that she does too.

Logan nods. “Yeah.”

“I don’t know what I’m so afraid of with this whole lawyer thing. I let that one case get to me so badly and then everything else started falling apart in my life and I needed something to blame, something to be my scapegoat. I just…I want to be the voice for the Lilly Kanes in the world, you know? To find their killers and bring them to justice. I don’t want custody battles and to ruin the lives of ordinary people just trying to get by. If I’m ruining anybody’s life it should be the murderers and the rapists in the world.”

“Look into the FBI again. The LAPD. Hell, run for sheriff of Neptune and kick the current Lamb out of office.”

She makes a noise that sounds somewhere between a sniffle and a snort. “Who spawned those guys, anyway?”

He shudders. “I’m not sure we want to know.”

She smirks, aimlessly fidgeting with the pages of the mystery book off to her side.

“Look, no one expects you to have your life completely figured out by Sunday. Go back to New York, finish up whatever you need to, tie up loose ends, pack up your apartment, and come back to me. I’ll go through your dad’s house with you. I’m sure Wallace and Mac will help too. I can probably even talk Dick into helping if we’re desperate here. You’re not alone. You don’t have to do any of this by yourself. We can figure things out together.”

“I feel so lost right now, Logan. The only thing I’m sure about is you.”

He guides her back into his arms and she allows herself to sink against him. He starts finger combing through her hair again.

“What it sounds like to me, is that you’re still not over everything that happened at the end of freshmen year at Hearst. And this custody battle case? It triggered something, brought all of those old feelings back. That’s not going to happen every time, that’s not going to be every case. I think that the Veronica Mars that I know would make a kickass lawyer. See, she’s a bit of shark. Stubborn and fierce as hell. Doesn’t back down from a fight and is always determined to fight for what she believes is right. You can do this, V. If you still want to, it’s not that farfetched of an idea. I’ll support you no matter what you decide but trust me when I tell you this sounds like an isolated incident surrounded by other aspects of your life that were starting to fall apart.”

“Am I too young to retire and not deal with any of it?”

He laughs a little. “You could try being a trophy wife for a while. See how that goes.”

“Are you still rich enough to make me a trophy wife?”

“I’ll check my bank account and get back to you.”

It’s her turn to laugh a little before she releases a long sigh. “He knew that I loved him, right? He didn’t die thinking that I hated him just because we were in a fight?”

“He knew,” Logan tells her. “Families fight, it happens. And you guys were always so close…he loved you too, Veronica. Keith was the type of father who just wanted what was best for his child, for you. He didn’t choose the P.I. life for himself, he was forced into it after he lost his office. It sounds like he didn’t want his last resort to be your first option.”

“Would you hate it if I took over his business?” she asks quietly. “Hire me another bodyguard and not tell me about it?”

“I promise I won’t ever do that again. You’ll be informed of the next one I hire.”

“Logan –”

“In all seriousness, I just need you to not shut me out. If you’re working on something for a case, don’t lie to me about it. Tell me where you’re going in case you wind up in a bad situation. We can be a team. You just have to let me in.”

She pulls back to look at him. “I’ve let you in. You know everything. And I promise to keep it that way.”

“Then we’re good. Do whatever is going to make you happy, Veronica. I’ll be right here, no matter what that is.”


	12. Chapter 12

They still haven’t made it back upstairs from the beach. It seems like too much effort at this point when they’re content sitting just as they are. The ocean waves serve as nice background noise for the quiet contentment they’ve fallen into. She’s still sitting wrapped up in his arms, staring out at the never-ending expanse of water.

It catches in his chest a little, the way she needs him, wants him. The number of times in their past they’ve sought comfort from each other pale in comparison to the way she’s leaning on him now. It still amazes him a little, that after everything, he’s still the one she trusts like this. With all their fights and disagreements and she still came back to him. She loves him. Veronica Mars loves _him_.

Logan skims a hand down her arm. “Mind helping me unzip this wetsuit?”

She hums, almost reluctantly shifting out of his grip as he turns so his back is to her. Her fingers linger at the nape of his neck, brushing against his skin before they start to pull down on the zipper. He can feel the goosebumps raising on his back as she lowers the zipper, and he wonders if it’s more from the rush of the ocean air against his bare skin or the brush of her fingertips. She helps him pull the fabric down his shoulders until the suit is pooling around his waist.

He starts to turn back around, when he feels one of her fingertips ghosting over his shoulder.

“How’d you get this scar?” she asks quietly.

It’s not a new one, if he knows which one she’s talking about. It’s been there, and she’s long since discovered its existence. But she’s never asked about it. She’s never asked about the stories behind any of them, simply accepted they were there because of his asshole father save for a few that did actually come from surfing wipeouts.

“How do you think?” he asks softly in return.

He feels her lips press against it before she rests her chin on his shoulder.

“I know you don’t like talking about it,” she says. “I don’t blame you. I just know I’ve never asked and I wanted to let you know if you do ever feel like talking about it, I’ll listen.”

He reaches for her hands as they drape down over his chest from behind, her chest now pressed against his back.

“It’s not easy to talk about,” Logan tells her. “I don’t like reliving it.”

“You don’t have to tell me. This one just isn’t as clear cut as the others. Not from a cigarette or a belt I don’t think. I was hoping maybe it was one you got from surfing.”

He shakes his head. “No, it was Aaron. And you’re right, it wasn’t his typical tactics.”

She leans away from him to kiss it again before re-settling against his back.

“It’s weird, you know?” he continues. “My dad died knowing that I hated his guts, and he couldn’t care less about it. He died and I felt nothing. Relief, maybe? But no sadness or remorse. I ran into him that day. That day he died, that day with Cassidy on the roof. He was goading me. Telling me that I’d be seeing more of him soon and that he would be back in control of the purse strings and therefore back in control of me. And then he just – he was gone.”

“I ran into him that day too. In the elevator. He told me that Lilly and I were a lot alike, not afraid to speak our minds. And then he told me that was the best part of smashing her head in with an ashtray, knowing that once and for all she would finally shut the hell up.”

Logan practically growls. “Did that bastard threaten you? I swear to god, I was more afraid for your life with him walking around as a free man than my own.”

“I don’t know,” she sighs. “It might have been a threat. Fortunately, I suppose, he didn’t live long enough for me to find out.”

“Didn’t – didn’t he try to set you on fire? When he found out you had those tapes?”

She nods against his shoulder. “Yeah, that happened.”

“Charming man, my father.”

“Is that why you were more concerned for my life than your own? The freezer thing?”

He sighs. “All the shit he did to me, it was never enough to kill me, you know? I don’t think he had that in him at least, the ability to murder his own son. But it sounds like he didn’t hesitate in killing Lilly. And he didn’t hesitate in trying to get rid of you.”

“All of that seems like another lifetime ago. The drama with all of that…maybe that’s why my dad wanted me to stay away. He didn’t want me living with that constant reminder.”

“You’re in love with that constant reminder,” Logan teases. “About to move in with, at least temporarily, that constant reminder.”

“You don’t remind me of only the bad stuff.”

“But I _do_ remind you of it.”

She bumps her temple against his. “Like I don’t for you? We’re both permanent reminders of our pasts. The good, the bad, and the ugly.”

“Do you think your dad was trying to keep you away from me?”

“What makes you ask that?”

He shrugs, shaking his head. “Just going back to that thing Mac said. That if I asked you to stay in Neptune, you would. I know the guy was never my biggest fan but…maybe he was worried your breakup with Piz was going to end up with us back together.”

“I’m not so sure. He knew we hadn’t spoken in nine years. For him to assume I wanted to come back just to be with you –”

“You two talked about me?” he asks with a smirk.

“You may have come up once or twice,” she sighs. “He was checking in if I had checked in. Maybe he heard about your overdose. News travels fast in Neptune after all.”

“But he never told you about it?”

She shakes her head. “No one did. You were a topic people back home tended to avoid around me. Not quite sure what that says about us.”

“Sounds like they were trying to protect you.”

“Protect me from what?” She sinks away from his back, tugging on him so he turns back around to face her. “Not to be narcissistic, but the drug use, the thoughts you were having, were they because of me? Was I…a factor?”

He can’t look at her, and he knows that tells her everything she needs to know. “I don’t want you blaming yourself, Veronica. My actions were not your own.”

“Logan –”

“It was a lot of things, okay? It wasn’t just losing you. But maybe that’s how everyone saw it, why they were all trying to protect you. You were away at Stanford living your life and I was here spiraling, and they all knew if they told you, you would come running back.”

“See? I told you I fucked up. Everyone was trying so damn hard to keep me away from this life. And they knew if anything would call me back to it, it would be you.” She shakes her head, dropping her gaze to her lap. “Someone should have told me. I should have been there for you.”

“I would have just pushed you away. I wouldn’t have wanted you to see me like that.”

“I wouldn’t have let you,” she says softly. “I would have stayed until I at least knew you were going to be okay. No matter how mean to me you would have tried to be. I can take it. I put up with it for years and it didn’t stop me from falling for you.”

He sighs, reaching out to tuck her hair back behind her ear when the wind blows it in front of her face. “We can’t get those years back. Mistakes were made, time was lost, but we have each other again now. And I’m not letting you go without more of a fight this time.”

“You don’t have to fight, Logan, I’m not going anywhere.”

“You say that now…” he says trailing off and wincing at the expression on her face after he says it.

“Look, I know I’m infamous for running from this, but…that’s not going to happen this time. All I want is you, Logan. As hard as that may be to believe, it’s true.”

“I don’t think it’s so hard to believe. But I feel like we’ve been here before and the honeymoon period doesn’t always last.”

“Yeah, but we’re not teenagers anymore. We’re almost 30. We’ve lived without each other and have both agreed we didn’t like it so much. I can guarantee you we’re still going to fight, but it’s not gonna make me walk out the door and never come back. I’m in this thing with you. Should have been for years now.”

Logan looks past her, out at the ocean, when he speaks. “I used to dream about you. After you left. About you coming back to me. Wanting to try again, wanting to fix everything that went so wrong. And then one day, the dreams just stopped. And I thought, this is it. This is where I forget her. But I didn’t want that. I feared the day when I would forget what your laugh sounded like. Feared the day when Italian food and empty parking garages didn’t make me think of you. To not have to worry about forgetting those things, for you to be mine again, that’s all I’ve ever wanted.”

She guides his gaze back toward hers, pulling him toward her so she can kiss him. A person can say a lot with a kiss, he realizes, and he feels it all in this one. Her apology, her forgiveness, her love. She’s not letting him go without a fight either. So, he pours it all back to her in return. He makes sure that she knows that he feels the exact same way. No running this time, from either of them.

“Parking garages,” she says softly, when she pulls away from his lips. “You’ve mentioned that one before. Why those?”

“Uh,” he stammers, one hand still threaded through her hair, gently tugging on a strand and thinking of the one he found on the floor of that garage that night. “Mercer. Me finding you unconscious stopping him from…”

“Oh,” she says, dropping her gaze. “You’d think that day would be something you’d want to forget.”

“Believe me, I’ve tried. It remains to be one of those things that still haunts me.”

“I’ve never told you what happened, have I? When he drugged me the second time? God, that’s one thing I do not miss about Neptune, no one has tried to slip me GHB in New York.”

Logan slips his hand out of her hair, brushing his thumb along her cheekbone. “Do you want to talk about it?”

She nods, expelling a sigh before looking up to meet his eyes. “It was Moe in the parking garage that night you found me. Not Mercer. And I think his only intentions were to shave my head to give Mercer an alibi, not to rape me. But the night I saved that girl from him, tried to take him down myself?” She laughs bitterly, shaking her head. “He hadn’t drugged me yet, so I fought him off. He fought back and I had the cuts and bruises to prove it, but I managed to stab him in the leg with a unicorn horn. Turns out his next choice victim was quite the collector. I got out of there, but I ran into Moe. I didn’t know yet that he was Mercer’s partner, so I let him help me. I accepted a drink from him and that’s when he drugged me again. Mercer showed up and told Moe to give me all the GHB he had left. I don’t know how much that was, but from the way they were talking, I thought for sure a dose that size was going to kill me. I realized I still had that rape whistle Parker gave me and I blew it. They got the hell out of the there when it created a scene in the hallway, because Parker heard it and came for me. Nothing happened between us. Mercer came out more injured in our fight than I did. You got yourself arrested for nothing.”

He groans, pushing a hand through his hair. “You heard about that?”

She nods. “You’ve got a strange way of expressing yourself there, L. You break up with me and then purposely get yourself arrested to beat up a guy who tried to hurt me.”

“Son-of-a-bitch deserved it anyway. Although I will say the asshole looked to be in pretty bad shape already. Well done, Bobcat.”

“What can I say? Have claws, will use.”

He chuckles a little at that, scrubbing a hand over his face. “So, what are you saying? I don’t need to think about you in empty parking garages anymore? That I saved your hair that night, and nothing more?”

She reaches for his hands, twining his fingers through her own. “No, you saved _me_. I don’t think Moe would have raped me, but honestly, I have no idea what he was capable of. I’m glad you found me when you did.”

“Think anyone else’s teen years were as traumatic as ours?”

She laughs. “I doubt it.”

“Our thirties are going to be better, right? No drugs or rapists or murdering parents?”

“Nah, none of that,” Veronica smiles, squeezing his hands.

“What do you think they’ll be like then?”

She hums, thinking about it. “Lots of amazing sex. Perhaps a dog to co-parent. Lots of homemade pancakes and takeout Italian. Actual happiness.”

“That sounds nice.”

“It does, doesn’t it?”

He looks back up at the house, eyeing the climb back up the steps. “All right, I’m cold. Might be time for the hot tub.”

She smirks at him. “Not until dark.”

“What are you worried about peeping neighbors getting an eyeful? Do you see how far apart these houses are? I don’t even know if the people who live on either side of this place are home.”

“You know how easy I burn,” she protests. “I’m not risking getting sunburnt _there_.”

“I’ll help you rub aloe on it, if you do.”

Veronica laughs. “Oh, I bet you would.”

“You like it,” he tells her, releasing one of her hands to gently grope at her breasts over her t-shirt. “You’ve gotten off on it before.”

“Never said I didn’t like the touching. I just don’t want to get sunburnt.” She pushes his hand away. “Down, boy.”

“Fine,” Logan sighs dramatically. “I’ll wait.”

“I’ll make it worth your while,” she teases, reaching up to rub her thumb over his lower lip.

“I’m holding you to that.”

* * *

They make it back up to the house and Logan digs out some takeout menus while Veronica wanders off to “explore” as she put it. He’s grateful his family hasn’t lived here in years, there shouldn’t be anything incriminating for her to find. But he underestimated her sleuthing abilities, forgetting this place has an attic. An attic, apparently, filled with Echolls family past, when she comes bouncing back into the kitchen twenty minutes later with an armful of photo albums and stuffed animals he had long since forgotten existed.

“Where the hell did you find that stuff?” he groans.

“The attic,” she says proudly, lining up each of the stuffed animals along the kitchen island. “I need to know all of their names.”

“What makes you think that 1. those are all mine and 2. that I had names for all of them?”

“Trina had a teddy bear dressed as a baseball player?” she asks far too innocently, batting her eyelashes at him as she toys with the tiny baseball cap on the bear.

“All right, so maybe that one was mine. Doesn’t mean I had a name for him.”

“What about this cute little fluffy bunny?” she asks, tugging on one of its big, floppy ears. “Hopper? Mr. Whiskers?”

“Why are you torturing me like this?”

“It’s not torture, Logan. Every kid had stuffed animals growing up, it’s not some big scandalous secret. I, for instance, had a dalmatian I oh so creatively named Puppy Dog.”

“See now that’s cute. Little Veronica Mars in her pigtails carrying around a little stuffed dog.”

She smacks his arm. “No one expects you to be Mr. Macho Man at three-years-old.”

“Really? Have you met my father?”

“You can’t be serious. He thought stuffed animals were too girly for his toddler son?”

Logan shrugs, trying to pry the photo albums away from her. She tightens her vice grip on them.

“No, nope, you’re bluffing. I can tell. Spill it, Echolls. What’d you name these guys?”

“You know it’s humiliating to tell your girlfriend the names of your old stuffed animals, right? It doesn’t come off as endearing like it does for you to tell me yours was named Puppy Dog.”

“Who am I going to tell?” she asks. “Think I’ll call TMZ or something?”

“I don’t care if TMZ knows. I care if _you_ know.”

“Tell me,” she whines. “Tell me and I’ll let you cop a feel.”

“You were going to let me do that anyway.”

She huffs. “Tell me and I’ll share with you a really embarrassing story from my childhood.”

“No.”

“Logan,” she whines again.

“Is this insight into you as a toddler?”

She smacks his arm again.

“All right, enough,” he laughs. “If it will make you stop, I’ll tell you. But your childhood story better be good.”

She claps her hands, far too delighted by this.

He clears his throat and picks up the baseball bear. “This is Cubbie.”

“Are you a closet Cubs fan?” she asks narrowing her eyes.

“Nope just a bear pun on a baseball name.”

“Uh-huh.”

He picks up the bunny. “Floppy.”

“Understandable. Look at the ears on that guy.”

Next the turtle. “Sheldon.”

“You were all about the puns, huh?”

Lastly, the stuffed, well-loved dog with an ambiguous breed. “I shit you not, Veronica. This is Puppy Dog.”

“No,” she gasps, collapsing into a fit of laughter.

“Stuff of soulmates right here. Bodes well for any future children we may have to name.”

She a holds a hand over her mouth to try and stifle herself.

“What do you think? Curly-headed boy? Blue-eyed girl?”

“Neither of us have curly hair,” she chokes out between laughs.

“I never said these were _our_ future children.”

“Stop,” she says, hitting him again.

“You promised you’d stop hitting me if I told you.”

“I never said that,” she keeps laughing. “God, I can’t believe we named our stuffed dogs the same thing.”

“It’s not very original, to be fair. There are probably plenty more Puppy Dogs out there living among us.”

“Yeah, but this is _us_. We didn’t even know each other yet.”

“Then like I said, stuff of soulmates.”

She looks at him with a mischievous glint in her eyes. “You believe in soulmates?”

“That’s not important right now. What is important, however, is this embarrassing story I was promised about little Veronica. So, spill, let’s hear it.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she says, playing with the ears on Floppy.

“Oh no, you don’t get to do that,” Logan tells her. “I told you mine, now you get to tell me yours.”

“There’s nothing to tell, young Veronica was a perfect angel.”

“I don’t buy that for a second.”

She sighs, shaking her head as a grin spreads back across her face. “Have you heard of Sabrina, the Teenage Witch?”

“The comic or the 90s the TV show?”

“Okay well yes, same thing basically. There was a movie that came out before the TV show aired. And when Sabrina finds out that she’s a witch and she can supposedly fly, she spends a lot of time jumping off her porch trying to get the magic to kick in.”

“Oh no,” Logan grins, seeing where this is going.

“Oh yes,” Veronica groans. “Broke my arm.”

He clears his throat trying to stop himself from laughing. “So, I take it you never grew into your flying powers?”

“Shut up.”

“Because I mean to say, you certainly put the bitch in witch –”

“I will smack you again.”

“Did you at least try using a broom?”

“Okay that’s it, I’m opening the photo albums.”

The expression on his face immediately changes. “How about we don’t do that, and we order takeout instead?”

“Too late,” she says, flipping open the white album on top.

Baby pictures. Fantastic.

“Look at you,” Veronica coos, pointing to a picture of baby him, naked, sitting in the kitchen sink.

“All right, that’s enough for the day.”

“Is this the point where I make a joke about being grateful for puberty?”

He groans again. “Veronica, I’m begging. Stop.”

“Are these all baby pictures?” she asks, flipping open the brown leather-bound album to a random page.

He at least has swim trunks on in these ones. Kindergarten-age Logan grins back at them proudly displaying a sandcastle beside him.

“You look happy,” she says.

He fidgets with the corner of the page, debating with himself to turn it or not. “The abuse hadn’t started yet. Dad had yet to make it big and from what I remember, things were still good.”

“When did things get bad?” she asks softly.

“Second grade, I think. He came home from his big break movie premiere and I was still awake waiting for him, excited to hear all about his big night. But it was past my bedtime and he was not happy about that.”

“Oh Logan,” she says, her hand on his shoulder. “I’m sorry. With the photos, I wasn’t even thinking I –”

“It’s okay,” he says, placing his hand on top of hers. “When we clean out your dad’s house, we can go through all your old family albums.”

“Deal.”

He gives in and turns the page, finding a picture of him with both of his parents and his sandcastle.

“Look at us,” he sighs. “So oblivious to the shitshow our lives would become. We look so…normal.”

“We can go back to the baby pictures which were only hurting your pride.”

“No,” he laughs. “I’m okay. Really. I mourned the loss of my father a long time before he actually passed. He was dead to me long before he actually was. The scar on my shoulder? He threw a beer bottle at me when I broke curfew my first night out with my driver’s license. 12 stitches.”

“You deserve so much better than the hand you were dealt.”

“It’s been improving lately. The universe must have gotten a new dealer.”

“Okay wow,” Veronica laughs. “Cheeseball much?”

“You started the cards reference,” he shrugs.

“How’d all this old stuff end up here anyway?” she asks, running her fingers over the embossed lettering on the white photo album.

“Well, like I said we did live here for a while. When we moved, whatever we had stored in the attic must have been left behind. We still owned this place after all. Extra storage, I guess. What else was up there?”

“Lots of boxes. I didn’t dig too much.”

He hands her the array of takeout menus. “Pick out something to eat, and while we wait for our food, we can relive the good years of my childhood.”

“You sure?”

“Warm up round for going through your dad’s place. I’ll be okay.”

She kisses him like she had earlier, every emotion unspoken through her lips.

“We’ll still end the night in the hot tub,” she whispers in his ear when she pulls away from the kiss.

“I was hoping you’d say that.”


	13. Chapter 13

The attic is a hot damn mess. Boxes upon boxes of crap he had no idea he’d been left to deal with. He spies the one Veronica had dug through for the stuffed animals and photo albums. All those years of her accusing _him_ of being childish when _she’s_ the one you can’t leave alone for five minutes.

She pulls open another box with reckless abandon and he can’t help but picture her as a kid on Christmas Day. He wishes he could return the gesture when they go through her dad’s house, but he knows that’s going to end up as a more somber occasion. She’s still in mourning. He is not.

Logan realizes then that they’ve never spent a Christmas together – not as a couple anyway, they were always broken up by the time the holiday rolled around. A shudder runs through him just _thinking_ about that one winter break in Aspen. And he doesn’t count the Echolls family Christmas with the poker game and some psycho trying to kill Aaron. Or the ones before that when the Fab Four were still a thing even, and she’d been the one to force them all to draw names. Those get togethers were always Christmas _adjacent_ instead of on Christmas Day themselves. He’d never been with her on what he knows to be her favorite holiday. He’s never seen her…well…like this.

“Aaron’s ego was really something else, wasn’t it?” she asks, wrinkling her nose and holding up a stack of his movie posters.

“He was his own favorite person.”

She fake gags and tosses the posters back in the box.

“We don’t need to keep those,” he tells her.

“Oh, I’m not here to clean out your attic I’m just snooping.”

“Yeah, that sounds about right,” he laughs.

She pulls open another box, digging out a bunch of deflated inflatable pool toys. “We could use these later.”

“Doubtful.”

She abandons it for yet another box. “More photo albums.”

Logan moves to stand beside her, taking the leather-bound volume from her outstretched hands. It’s his parents wedding album. Before they were rich and only mildly famous – a couple of guest roles on soap operas, supporting roles in B list movies. When they were still happy and in love. Before he started cheating on her. Before he started getting abusive.

“Fun fact,” he starts. “My mother had two engagement rings.”

Veronica looks at him curiously but doesn’t saying anything as though she’s waiting for him to continue.

“She had the one she’s wearing here, the _real_ one, the family heirloom, the one actually symbolizing love, the one I still have. And then she had the bigger rock Aaron bought her as an apology essentially for constantly cheating on her. She was wearing that one when she –”

Her hand slides across his shoulders, her head resting against his bicep to look at the photo album with him.

“I kept this ring around,” he says, tapping the ring in the photograph. “Thought maybe I’d need it someday. But I’m starting to wonder if it’s cursed. I should just go out and buy my own if I ever get to that point – to wanting to get married.”

“After everything I’ve seen in my life, I’m not even sure if I believe in marriage anymore. I’ve seen it tear too many people apart.”

“People fall out of love,” he says, turning the page in the album to a shot of their massive wedding cake. “I’ve seen it happen nearly as much as you. Doesn’t mean they weren’t in love to begin with. Doesn’t mean that every marriage is doomed to fail.”

“It’s the falling out of love part that scares me. To have something like that and then lose it –”

“I don’t think you and I have to worry about that.”

“Logan –”

“We were apart for nine years and we didn’t fall out of love with each other. We said awful things to one another, parted on some not so great terms, and we’re still in love.”

“If this is you proposing –”

“I’m not. Not yet anyway.”

“You say that like you see it in our future,” she says, stepping away from him and bending back down to dig through the box. “Three days back with me and you can already see me as your wife?”

The word does something to him. Wife. _His wife_. _Veronica_ as his wife. It was never something he thought about when they were in high school or even college. It’s not like at the time he had ever seen himself settling down with anyone. But he supposes even back then he knew if he was going to commit to anyone it would be her.

Still though, _Veronica Mars as his wife_.

Logan takes the next photo album she hands him, flipping to a page at random, seeing that Lynn is pregnant with him in this one.

“I’m not rushing us into anything here, I swear. I’m serious about you staying with me just until you find your own place _unless_ you decide you like living with me better. The ring comment was just me making conversation. But haven’t we both realized by now that all our relationships fail because we’re still so hung up on each other?”

She straightens back up, wrapping her arms around her torso. “Nobody else will ever be what you are to me. Marriage is just –”

He reaches out and places a hand on her shoulder. “We’re not there yet. And we don’t need to be. We may have hashed out more emotional stuff in the past three days then we did the entire time we were together, but that doesn’t mean we’re ready for that type of commitment. It really was just side commentary about the ring. I should have realized you’d think I was talking about you. I mean it makes sense – I don’t want to be with anyone else.”

She unwraps her arms from around herself, sliding them around his torso instead. Logan returns her embrace, dropping the album with Lynn’s pregnancy back into the box.

“You ever wonder how we ended up here?” Veronica asks, quietly.

“In the attic of my parents’ old beach house?”

She swats at his chest, pulling back out of his arms. “In love the way we are. We hated each other. I had many evil thoughts about plotting my revenge against you.”

He laughs, squatting down to stack the albums back in the box nicely so it will close. He has no interest in digging through the rest. He’s only up to here to humor her anyway.

“You planted a bong in my locker,” he reminds her.

“You smashed in my headlights.”

“I feel like we’ve had this argument before.”

She rolls her eyes, lifting the tarp covering an old painting and frowning at what she unveils. One of Aaron’s naked women that manages to pass as expensive art no doubt. She drops the tarp.

“I’m just saying,” she continues. “There was a deep-seated hatred between us. It was there after Lilly died, there after _every_ time we broke up.”

“Come on, now that’s not true. Our breakups never led to property damage.”

“The lamp you broke right before senior year disagrees.”

“Crap, I forgot about that. Have I mentioned that I’m sorry?”

She smirks, lifting the flap on another box. “Maybe that whole enemies to lovers trope has some merit.”

“No, with us it’s more friends to enemies to lovers to enemies to lovers to enemies to lovers…does that cover it?”

“Worse than Ross and Rachel,” she says, shaking her head.

“You know there’s always been something between us, V. We bonded over our alcoholic mothers at a young age. Hell, even Duncan and Lilly could see it. We were with them, but they could tell what we really wanted was to be with each other.”

“That’s not true,” she says with a laugh.

“It is!” he protests. “Stop lying to yourself.”

“I was happy with Duncan at that age. And when you and Lilly weren’t in one of your fights, you two were happy too.”

“You admitted to me yesterday that at 13, you wanted me to be your first kiss.”

“Yeah, but that was before –”

“Before Duncan actually was? Before you convinced yourself that you loved him and that he was the perfect boyfriend. All because you couldn’t have me.”

She crosses her arms over her chest, narrowing her eyes at him. “You think I was only with him because you were already with Lilly?”

“Well, you wouldn’t have been with him if I was single.”

She shakes her head, smirking. “So damn sure of yourself.”

“Look me in the eyes and tell me there hasn’t always been something there between us.”

Veronica meets his gaze, her smirk not disappearing. “I can’t do that. But you can’t seriously tell me that Duncan and Lilly knew. Lilly may have talked a big game and had no qualms about cheating on you, but Caitlin Ford so much as looked in your direction and she was suddenly the most possessive girlfriend ever. And Duncan? When he and I got back together, he _bristled_ anytime you were near us. How you two managed to be roommates is beyond me. I think he saw you as a threat. He wasn’t like that before.”

“Maybe they chose not to see it. Us getting together would have ended the Fab Four forever after all. They couldn’t date each other. We both know how strongly DK felt about incest.”

“Not strongly enough, apparently. Just ask my virginity.”

He blows out a puff of air.

“I went back to him anyway,” she says, shaking her head. “Thought he’d be a nice change of pace after you. And I did love him, but in an entirely different way.”

“Like a brother?” Logan asks, wincing.

“I will hurt you,” she says, grabbing a nearby candlestick to mock threaten him with.

“All of that _aside_ ,” he continues on with his original point. “We’ve always been close. Even when we were just friends.”

“And when we hated each other?”

“Just made us better at war. We know each other too well. Even what ticks us off.”

“Still,” she says, walking back over to him. “How’d we end up here?”

He pulls her back into his arms. “You kissed me outside of a shady motel and I never wanted it to stop.”

“Oh, so it’s my fault, huh?”

“All signs point to yes. At 12 it was the pigtails and the soccer uniform. At 15 it was that infectious laugh of yours. At 17 it was the kiss –”

“Wait,” she says, pulling back to look up at him, but keeping her arms wrapped around him. “15?”

“I told you. There’s always been something there.”

She hums, curling back into his chest. “And at 28?”

“Everything. All of you.” He places a kiss against her hairline. “What is it about me that does it for you?”

She laughs lightly into his shirt. “You always look out for me, have my back. Maybe minus that year we were at war, but still…you were willing to choose me over all of your friends. And you’re always willing to punch people for me which probably shouldn’t turn me on as much as it does but –”

“I forgot about that,” he says, shaking his head. “Aaron trying to throw me a surprise birthday party during the completely wrong month. I didn’t want any of those people there. All I wanted was to make out with my new girlfriend.”

“Which was going great until I saw those video cameras of your dad’s and totally freaked out and ruined things for no reason.”

“No, I get it,” he tells her. “You had every right not to trust me. Especially with how awful I’d been treating you mere weeks before that.”

“But you’d just told everyone who had a problem with me to go home. I should have known you were on my side. I should have at least stayed and confronted you about them instead of just up and leaving. But I was worried the whole thing was just an act. That you were using me just to humiliate me.”

“I would never do something like that. Film us and then spread it around?”

She looks up at him. “I know that _now_. At that age I was still struggling with what had happened at Shelly’s party and the fact that I didn’t remember any of it and still didn’t know exactly what had happened to me. I didn’t want to put myself in that kind of situation again.”

Logan brushes back her hair from her face. “All I’d wanted was to kiss you.”

She shakes her head, a smirk forming on her lips. “I would have gotten you hard. And _that_ would have freaked me out.”

He groans. “You were so wasted on Duncan Kane.”

She laughs. “And look who’s got the girl now.”

He tilts her head up and kisses her, soft and gentle.

“I’m sorry it took me so long to trust you,” she says when she pulls away.

“You’d been through a lot. And having a mystery rapist, I don’t blame you for not trusting anyone of the opposite sex, let alone me who had quite violently smashed in your headlights.”

“But I knew _you_ , Logan. We’d been feeding each other our secrets since we were 12. I should have known that no matter how bad our little war got, you would never actually hurt me. I still can’t believe I ever did.”

He sighs, rubbing at her lower back. “That’s why you don’t need the old you. It was hard for her to trust people, to _love_ people. She was shit at communication, always quick to jump to conclusions. You really want her back?”

She curls back into his chest. “I guess not.”

“Teenage Logan wasn’t much better,” he assures her. “We were both pretty fucked up. Same darkness stone, right? That’s why we get each other. But we can be happy now without reverting back to the people we used to be.”

“There are still parts of the old me that I miss, but you’re right. I don’t need all of her back. I don’t need the pieces that were too scarred by trauma to let people in.”

“You phrase it that way, but it took one hell of a trauma for you to let me in like this in the first place.”

Her hands fist into his shirt. “Lilly’s death closed me off from the world. My dad’s opened me back up.”

“That Keith,” he says softly. “He really would do anything for you.”

“You took it too far this time, old man,” she sniffles into his shoulder after glancing up at the ceiling.

He gives her the moment, lets her decide if she wants to joke more about her dad or talk about him or go back to avoiding the topic of Keith Mars all together. He’ll follow her lead on this one. He’s already kicking himself a bit for bringing him back up.

Veronica’s fingers fidget with the back of his shirt. “I obviously haven’t thought about marriage much at all, but you bringing it up now and realizing my dad won’t be there to walk me down the aisle if it ever happens…that sucks. And I don’t know where I stand on kids at this point, but I’ll never get to see him as a grandfather either. I don’t get to see him as anything now. Period.”

“I’m sure Wallace would walk you down the aisle if you wanted him to. He’d probably prefer that over being a bridesmaid.”

She snorts. “But he would look so good in pink taffeta!”

“You must be out of your damn mind if you think you’re going to get Mac into the color pink.”

“We’ll save the pink for Dick then.”

“You know what, he probably actually wouldn’t be mad about it.”

She shakes her head, pulling back again to look up at him. “This is our family now, isn’t it? You, me, and our three best friends?”

“Think we should start referring to ourselves as the Fab Five?”

“I don’t think that one is going to stick, but you can try.”

Logan rubs at her lower back again. “I told you, you’re not alone. As long as you have all of us, you never have to be. I even think you’re grandfathered in with Dick at this point.”

“He hates me,” she says, laughing a little.

“And you hate him. But because of me, you’re stuck with each other.”

“The brother I never wanted.”

“See? He fits right in.”

She steps back out of his arms, wandering over to the box he thinks holds the old pool toys. She plucks out a deflated innertube. “We made need this later.”

“Trust me, that thing is basically the size of the hot tub.”

“Not for the hot tub,” she tells him, sauntering back over to the top of the stairs. “Tomorrow’s another day, Logan. And I’ve got an idea.”

“I’m almost afraid to ask.”

She shoots him an almost wicked grin in response. “The sun has set enough now. Meet me in the hot tub?”

He grins back in response. “I thought you’d never ask.”

* * *

There are strings of twinkle lights crisscrossing back and forth over the patio deck. Logan plugs those in and flips on the lights and jets in the jacuzzi. He’s sitting on the edge in just his boxer shorts, when he sees Veronica reappear in the doorway to the backyard, wrapped in a towel. The real question is, is she wearing anything underneath it? She holds his gaze as she drops the towel and lets it pool around her feet.

Well, that answers his question.

“Decide it was time to cross skinny dipping off your bucket list?” he asks her.

“Oh, I already did that. Years ago,” she laughs.

“Seriously?” he asks, his eyes widening at the thought with a little jealously creeping in that it wasn’t with him.

She nods, starting to walk over to the hot tub. “Junior year Homecoming actually. I was inspired reminiscing about Homecoming from the previous year.”

His jaw drops. “You went skinny dipping with that Troy creep?”

Veronica laughs again. “No, I made him wait with Wallace and his date in the limo. Told them there was just something I had to do.”

“And when you got back in the limo all wet?”

“That’s one of the many good things about Wallace. He rarely wants the details.”

Logan shakes his head. “You’re an insane woman, you know that?”

She smirks at him. “Yeah, I’m aware.”

The light from the jacuzzi catches her just right as she steps over to sit next to him on the edge, and he notices a rather large purple bruise on her ass. 

“How’d you get that bruise on your ass?” he asks as she dips her toes into the water.

She hums, tilting her head up to look at the twinkle lights or maybe to try and make out the stars. “You.”

He’s taken aback by her response. “Me? When did I –”

“When you backed me up into that dresser last night. You know, after we moved on from that room with the twin bed.”

Oh. Right. They hadn’t exactly made it to the bed in the next room they’d stumbled into. He’d taken her right up against that dresser.

“Sorry about that,” he winces.

“I don’t mind,” she laughs. “It was very worth it in the moment.”

“The way we were going at it last night, you’d think neither of us had had sex in nine years.”

“I basically hadn’t,” she grumbles, sinking down into the hot tub and tugging on his ankle to do the same.

Logan shimmies out of his boxers and joins her, relaxing back against one of the jets.

“Piz that terrible in bed?” he asks.

“God,” she groans, shifting until she finds a jet of her own to claim. “If I had just slept with him in college, I could have avoided this whole second attempt at a relationship.”

He laughs, far too amused with this information. “If the sex was that bad why didn’t you dump him after the first time you slept with him?”

“He seemed nervous,” she shrugs, rolling her neck back and forth until she gets it to crack. “I thought it would get better after that, but it never did.”

“Veronica.”

He’s still laughing – can’t seem to stop.

“And then he was _in love with me_.”

“You broke the poor boy. Shattered him. Drew him in with all of this,” he gestures to her naked body, “and then left him for dead.”

“You make it sound like I’m some sort of maneater.”

His laughter has not stopped. “Did he ever bring you to orgasm? Even once?”

“We’re getting into this?” she groans.

“Into what?”

She scrubs her hands over her face, sinking down in the water until it’s up to her shoulders. “I had to think about you.”

“You what now?”

“Wipe that cocky grin off your face, you heard me.”

“No, no I need more details. Please elaborate.”

She groans again, still trying to hide behind her hands. “I had to think of you for him to make me come. And as long as I’m being honest here, I had to do the same thing for Duncan senior year.”

“Well now that little tidbit of information just made my entire year. I actually _am_ the best sex you’ve ever had. Hell, the best grope in the backseat of a vehicle you’ve ever had. That was the only material you had to work with for DK to get you off.”

“Your ego so did not need this boost.”

“Did you have to think of me with all of your boyfriends?” he asks, waggling his eyebrows.

“Will it hurt your pride if I tell you no?”

“I’ll try not to let it.”

She smirks, scooting closer to him. “There haven’t been _that_ many. A couple at Stanford, one or two at Columbia. They weren’t on your skill level, believe me, but I didn’t have to conjure up memories of you to get off either.”

“Do you, uh, have a go to memory?”

She slides closer again, pressing her body against his as she speaks. “How much detail do you want?”

He swallows and she presses herself closer.

“Or rather, how much detail can you handle?” she asks.

“I can take whatever you dish out.”

She skims her hand down his stomach, resting on his thigh. “With Duncan, I’d think about that one summer day we almost got caught in the school parking lot when I came to visit you over lunch. I was straddling your thigh and your hands were up my shirt. Your mouth was on that spot on my neck that practically lived under concealer and foundation all summer. The first time I ever came for you. Right as Van Clemmons walked by.”

“You were so mortified,” he chuckles, skimming his fingertips up to her hip. “Both that I’d gotten you to orgasm that way _and_ because you thought Van Clemmons saw it happen. Which he didn’t, by the way.”

“I still swear that he did. He could _not_ look me in the eyes when senior year started.”

“Well, we _were_ out there pretty much every day fogging up my car windows. It’s not like he _didn’t_ know what was going on in there.”

She shakes her head.

“Did you trade in for a different one with Piz?” he asks.

“Oh obviously,” she says, nipping at his pulse point. “I’d had all of you by then. So many enticing memories to choose from.”

“Any one more so than the others?” he asks, slipping his hand around her hip to grab at her ass, trying to avoid the bruised area.

She nods, her hand slipping down from his thigh to stroke his cock. “It’s twisted really, when you think about it. But I used to go back to that night Piz convinced me to get back together with you. In hindsight, I think he was trying to get me to give him a chance, but it pushed me back to you instead. I showed up at your door and you barely got the door closed before we were on each other. You carried me to bed with my legs wrapped around your waist. And we just couldn’t get enough of each other. It was like how we were last night.”

He moans at the combination of her hand and the memory. He remembers that night. Remembers getting very little sleep. Remembers how extremely vocal she had been the entire time. Remembers never wanting her to leave his bed.

“An excellent choice,” he grunts. “Maybe don’t make me come _in_ the hot tub though?”

She laughs into his ear, releasing his cock and skimming her hand back up his stomach and chest and around to his neck. “Have you ever thought of me when you’ve been with another woman?”

Logan squeezes her ass. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

“That’s not an answer.”

He chuckles. “I have, yes.”

“More than once?”

He nods. “More than that awkward night with Madison yes, if that’s what you’re implying.”

“What did I tell you last night about mentioning her while we’re naked?”

“You brought up Piz with your hand around my cock,” he reminds her, narrowing his eyes.

She grins. “Oops.”

“I might have,” he starts slowly, continuing on, “slept with a girl named Victoria and kept slipping up and calling her Veronica.”

She laughs like it’s the funniest thing she’s ever heard. “I have at least refrained from doing that, from calling out your name while I was with someone else.”

“God, I wish you had called out my name when you were in bed with Piz. I would pay good money to see him react to that.”

She smacks his chest. “You to watch me with him?”

He scrunches his face up in disgust. “No, nope. Just skip to the part where he’s all offended. That would bring me great joy.”

Veronica rolls her eyes. “I ended up with you, didn’t I? You won.”

“Can I call and tell him that? Tell him you had no problem meeting my parents?”

“Stop,” she says, smacking him again. “We were kids when we met. Of course, I’ve met your parents.”

He smirks, skimming his fingers up her spine. “Anyway, want to know why Victoria made me think of you?”

She hums. “Because our names are so similar?”

“Well, I mean probably, but uh, I just couldn’t get you out of my head that night. I kept thinking about that breathy little way you used to say my name, the sounds you’d make – the little moans and grunts. I wanted her to be you so bad.”

“When was this?” she asks.

“Not long after you’d left for Stanford.”

She props her chin up on his shoulder. “I’m sorry I left without saying goodbye.”

“You needed a fresh start. One that didn’t include me.”

“I should have known I’d find my way back to you eventually. All the fresh start did was make me miss what I already had.”

“Well, good news for you, you don’t have to _imagine_ fucking me anymore.”

“You’re right,” she says, nudging her nose against his neck before nipping at his skin. “I get the real thing now.”

“How fortunate for both of us.”

“Call me Victoria, and I’ll hurt you.”

Logan laughs, guiding her mouth up to his. “Wouldn’t dream of it, Bobcat.”


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello friends! Thank you all so much for sticking with me, it makes me so happy to hear you were all excited for the return of this fic after I took a little break from it to focus on my Christmas one. That being said, we're nearing the end of this story. I'm thinking 3-4 chapters are remaining after this one. Happy New Year!

One of these days he _will_ wake up with her still next to him. Her nightmares and demons won’t force her out of bed at some ungodly hour. Or maybe she’ll just wake him up with her instead. Maybe tomorrow. A lazy Sunday morning where they’re both in denial about leaving. He’s not looking forward to returning to the reality of it all, any more than she is. She won’t be with him like this anymore, not right away anyway. She has to go back to New York and figure her life out. He has to go back to his own job and wait for her to return.

At least he knows she’s coming back this time. Back to be with him. He finally _does_ get the girl.

Logan expects to see her in the kitchen like he has every other morning this week. But she’s not there. He finds a lone bowl in the sink, perhaps from cereal, and an empty coffee mug.

How long has she been up?

He peaks around into the living room too and there’s also no sign of her in there.

“What are you up to?” he mutters to himself, stepping over to the large glass windows to take in the view.

Another sunny day, the ocean sparkling in the sunlight, he’s almost tempted to go out surfing again. He yawns, stretching his arms overhead as he moves to check the back patio with the pool. If she’s not there, he’s worried she’s up digging around through the attic again. Most of the junk up there needs to stay buried.

His jaw drops as he rounds the corner and sees the pool filled to the edges with every damn inflatable pool toy from the attic – innertubes, beach balls, rafts, an alligator and a shark. She even managed to dig the pool noodles out of god knows where. He used to try to get Trina to play fight him with those, like they were swords. She was never interested.

But still, there’s no sign of Veronica.

He walks around to the front of the house, just to confirm that his BMW is still here. It’s still there, but he eyes it like he’s trying to figure out if it’s been moved. Not that it would matter. It’s here now meaning so is she. He just doesn’t know where…

Logan hisses when he feels cold water collide with his back.

“What the hell?” he asks, turning around.

Veronica’s standing there, smirking at him, wearing a swimsuit – _a bikini_ – she definitely didn’t buy on their first store run, and holding his old Super Soaker in her hands.

“I have…so many questions,” Logan tells her, his gaze tracing over her in the little blue suit that just nearly matches her eyes.

“We got sidetracked,” she tells him. “We came out here hoping to relive our past together and we got as far as pillow forts before all those messy feelings took over. So, I’m reigning us back in. Welcome back to the summer before freshmen year, Logan. The year we co-created the pool obstacle course. The one Lilly would give up on halfway through, complaining her top was about to fall off. The one Duncan always thought he would be good at because of his athletic soccer ability, but never won a single round.”

“The one you and I always used to make up last minute rules to because neither of us could admit defeat to each other,” he finishes, shaking his head. “You were so goddamn competitive.”

“Still am,” she smirks.

“Okay, but are you sure you’re not Lilly in this scenario? Veronica at this age was still wearing one-pieces. If you fight as dirty as you used to, you’re going to lose that top.”

“Nothing you haven’t seen before,” she shrugs. “And this was all the store had left in my size.”

He steps over to her, eyeing the water gun still cradled in her arms. “Was this in that box of pool toys too?”

She nods.

“And there was only one?”

She nods again. “We only need the one. It’s not like we have Duncan or Lilly to contribute to that round where the Super Soakers get involved.”

“Good thing too,” Logan laughs. “Lilly always used to aim for the head.”

“She was vicious,” Veronica agrees, laughing as well. “Never wanted to participate until it was time to become a physical obstacle herself.”

“How didn’t we see it back then?”

“How vicious she was?”

He shakes his head. “That unspoken-14-going-on-15-teenage-sexual tension between us. At the end of the day, it was always you and me fighting over which one of us won. Pretty sure I even had you pinned against a raft at one point.”

She grins. “Oh, you did. Lilly found it very threatening. So much so, that she made her first move on you the next day.”

“And I let her?”

Veronica shrugs, shifting the water gun to rest against her hip. “She already had boobs at that age.”

“Typical horny teenage boy,” he says, shaking his head again.

“Come on horndog,” she teases, tugging on his t-shirt. “Go put on those swim trunks of yours and meet me by the pool for the ultimate rematch.”

He starts walking with her back toward the house. “Did I win the last one of these we did?”

“I tried to contest it, but yes.”

He hums, trying to separate out a summer’s worth of these obstacle courses. The last one right before school started, what had that been like? Lilly had been helping him cheat. _His new girlfriend_ , Lilly. And Veronica had been pissed – about the cheating _and_ about him dating her best friend he realizes now. She’d spent all summer flirting with him, even after Lilly had told her the previous year that she had a crush on him. She’d told him that she had conceded after Lilly had expressed her interest, but he sees it now that she hadn’t. And he’d flirted right back, figuratively pulling her pigtails about these games they’d invented together, trapping her underneath him more than once if he’s remembering correctly.

But Lilly had asked him out and Veronica, well, she ended up with Duncan.

“Why’d we stop?” he asks, pausing in the doorway to the house before he goes to get changed. “We all had another summer together before we lost her.”

She sets the super soaker down on a nearby lounge chair and crosses her arms over her chest. “You were with her. I was with Duncan.”

“So?”

“This,” she gestures behind her at the pool, “was our thing. You think they would have been okay with us wrestling around in the pool together while we were dating them?”

He rubs at the back of his neck, thinking about being 14 again. He remembers liking Veronica. He remembers liking Lilly. He remembers Duncan telling him about his crush on Veronica and thinking that everything was going to work out perfectly. They could all start dating and still be friends. He’d never thought to ask Veronica what she had wanted, even when he _knew_ how she used to look at him – which is a lot like how she looks at him these days.

“Why did you just let her have me?” he asks softly.

“A girl like her? She was always going to win,” Veronica shrugs. “She was prettier than I was. More confident than I was. I spent too much time waiting for you to like me back, and then she just swooped in and claimed you for herself. And I had to be fine with it because she was my best friend and you were my friend and I didn’t want to lose either of you.”

“She wasn’t prettier than you.”

She reaches out and touches his arm. “You chose Lilly, Logan. And that’s okay. We still ended up here. With each other.”

“Did you even want to be with Duncan? Did you even like him in that way?”

She shrugs again. “He was the first guy to ever ask me out. I wanted to like him. I wanted it to be magical and wonderful and I convinced myself that it was. But what I really wanted was to fill your pool with every inflatable pool toy known to man again and beat your ass at our own game.” She smiles to herself, before shaking her head. “I hated her for treating you like she did – the cheating, the lying about it. But you always forgave her. And I realized you really did love her and I was just your friend.”

“I grew up watching my mother get cheated on by my father,” he says softly. “And she never left him. It’s twisted the things that stick at that age.”

She rubs his arm again. “I don’t know why she felt like she had to get sex from elsewhere. She used to talk to me about your sex life until I was red in the face from embarrassment. She was certainly enjoying whatever you were doing and having now been on the receiving end of that myself, I’d have to agree.”

Logan chuckles. “I don’t think she was cheating from a lack of…satisfaction. It was more of a power move.”

“She never could see the good thing she had right in front of her.”

He moves his hand on top of hers as it rests on his arm. “Apparently neither could I.”

She meets his gaze, giving him a small smile.

“If I could make that choice over again,” he starts.

“You have me now,” she says, cutting him off. “And for the foreseeable future it seems. Now go change so I can reclaim my victory over our obstacle course and beat your ass fair and square.”

He grins, squeezing her hand. “We’ll see about that.”

* * *

“You’re making that up!” Logan accuses 20 minutes later, pointing a pool noodle at her.

“No, I’m not!” Veronica protests. “God, we used to have this same argument about this when we were 14.”

“And you’ve clearly always been wrong about it.”

“I invented this game. I know what I’m talking about.”

“No, _we_ invented this game. I had just as much of a say in the rules as you did. And that right there, was an illegal move.”

“You won with this move the last time we played.”

“Yeah, and I was cheating.”

Veronica huffs, pushing herself back onto the closest raft and straddling it so her legs dangle in the water. “I’m not restarting.”

“Those are the _rules_ , Veronica.”

“Maybe it’s time for some new ones. You know, to accommodate our aging bodies.”

“Please, like stamina is our problem,” he says, wiggling his eyebrows. “And it’s not like you’re any taller than you were at 14.”

“Hey!”

She splashes him where he sits on the edge of the pool and he laughs, kicking his legs in the water to splash her back.

“I may not be taller, but _you_ are. Your legs are so much longer than mine, it’s an unfair advantage,” she complains.

“Don’t hate the player, hate the game.”

She groans and splashes him again.

“Restart the course or I bring out the Super Soaker early,” he warns her.

“You use that as a threat like I’m not already wet.”

“I can pull a Lilly and aim for your head.”

“You’re gonna have to catch me first.”

Logan reaches for the water gun as she slips off the raft and dives under water. She can’t hold her breath forever, she’ll have to come up for air eventually, and that’s when he’ll get her. But there are so many inflatables in the pool, he can’t even see where she went. He tries to track the movement of the water, but when her head pops up again, it’s nowhere near where he thought it would be. He tries to squirt her with the water gun which they’ve filled with ice water (middle school-based rules apply here), but she ducks out of the way again and swims somewhere else. He follows her this time, ready to get her when she resurfaces. But this time she blocks his spray with the large inflatable shark. Her size is now an advantage.

When she sinks beneath the water again, Logan slips into the pool to try for a stealth approach. The amount of pool toys makes it very difficult to maneuver around and he has to keep nudging them out of his way. Veronica pops up in the center of an innertube this time.

“Getting tired yet?” he calls to her.

“You got in?” she calls back. “That’s cheating!”

“You started it.”

“No, you did. Back in 2002.”

“You can’t hold my past crimes against me.”

“Can too! Want me to recite to you the case law that says so?”

“Law nerd.”

“Ohhh good comeback.”

She sticks her tongue out at him before diving below the water again. He follows her more closely this time, anticipating her next move. He wants to move right where she does. Strike from right on top of her.

“Veronica,” he coos, “you can’t hold your breath forever. You have to face me eventually.”

He sees her, knows that he can approach with stealth from behind. Sure enough, she pops up with her back to him and can sense her immediate panic when she doesn’t see him. She starts to duck back underwater right away, but Logan’s quicker. Veronica squeals when the ice water hits her neck. She spins on him, splashing, attempting to block the icy stream from the water gun.

“You’re making it worse,” Logan laughs.

“No, it’s helping!”

She splashes her way toward him, Logan still trying to spray her with the Super Soaker despite her frantic movements. She’s next to him now, trying to wrestle the toy out of his grasp.

“Nope, mine!” he laughs, holding it above his head and out of her reach.

She mutters something about her height and then attaches herself to him like a koala and tries to climb him like a tree. He laughs even harder, watching her struggle, feeling her cling to him. But then her struggles to gain purchase on him in the water lead to a very unfortunate kick to his groin, and then they’re both tumbling back into the water.

“Flag on the play,” he wheezes, when they both come back up for air.

The Super Soaker floats idly at their sides. Veronica laughs, gingerly wrapping her legs back around his waist. This part of the pool is 5 feet deep and she can barely touch the bottom. Even though he’s in pain, he finds that adorable.

“I’m so sorry,” she tells him. “I wasn’t trying to do that.”

“Should have known you’d still play dirty.”

“I’ve never kicked you in the balls before.”

“No, that was new. And painful.”

She kisses his cheek. “I’m sorry.”

“For the record,” he starts. “You didn’t win.”

“Don’t even start,” she groans.

“I remain the crowned champion.”

“You admitted to cheating to win that crown. Your title has been revoked. I’m the new champion by default.”

“Not sure that’s how that works.”

“No other players left in the game. I win.”

He knows she’s talking about their obstacle course game. But she says it and he thinks about how Lilly is gone, how Duncan is gone. They’re the only two left standing, the only players left from their 2002 shenanigans. And how in the end, they both got exactly what they had both secretly wanted when they were 14 – each other.

“What’s your prize?” Logan asks, getting a better grip on her when he feels her starting to slip.

“Bragging rights.”

“Who do you plan on bragging to?”

“Anyone who will listen.”

He rolls his eyes, walking them to the shallower end of the pool and depositing her onto a raft. He flops down onto the one next to it on his back. Veronica rolls onto her stomach, crossing her arms under her chin and looking over at him.

“And who exactly is going to care that you beat me _illegally_ – I’m sorry – _by default_ in our own version of pool Olympics?”

“My dad will. I remember I used to tell him how we –” she catches herself midsentence and stops.

Logan sits up and looks over at her, making sure she’s okay. She hasn’t moved but he can see the shift of emotion in her eyes. The playfulness that had been there all morning replaced with sadness.

“I used to update him about who won our little summer games,” she continues on, not looking at him. “I almost think he was surprised when I came home one day and told him I was dating Duncan instead of you.”

“Keith was Team Logan, huh?”

“Only until he got to know you,” she retorts back, some of the playfulness returning to her voice. It doesn’t reach her eyes.

“Would he have hated this? Us back together?”

“I don’t know. I’d say he just wanted me to be happy, but when I told him I was unhappy in New York he didn’t want to hear it.”

She blows out a puff of breath, rolling over onto her back and draping her arms across her eyes to block out the sun. The pool rocks with her motion, and he steadies himself on his own raft by bracing his arms out in front of him.

“I used to tell him everything, you know? Well, _almost_ everything. Who am I supposed to talk to now? Who else will care that I beat that Echolls kid in a game we made up when we were 14? Who else will care when the tech world finds a way to invent an even smaller and undetectable camera?"

"I’m sure Wallace would listen to stories of you taking me down. Hell, even Dick would be amused by that. And Mac is your resident tech guru friend, is she not? Freak out to her about that stuff. For everything else, you’ve got me.”

“I hate how grief works. How one minute I can be all happy and having fun and everything is fine, and then I think about him and it’s like…all the wind gets knocked out of me. Does it ever get easier?”

Logan sighs, kicking his feet back and forth underwater. “Yes and no. It becomes less of a shock to the system, in my experience, but it never truly goes away. I mean think about Lilly. You’ve lost her, and we can talk about her freely now. You lost your mom, alive or not, she’s been gone to you for a while. Does thinking about them now still feel like your world is turned on its axis?”

She shakes her head back and forth against her raft. “But Mom and I were never that close. And Lilly…her death was such a big part of my life and – I don’t know it just feels different.”

“You know that no matter what was said in your fight, he’d want you to be happy. That’s the kind of dad he was.”

She lifts her arms from her eyes and squints over at him. “I hate that you didn’t get that. A dad like mine.”

“Bygones,” he says, shaking his head. “I turned out okay, anyway, didn’t I?”

She smiles, pushing herself up into a seated position to look at him better. “You’re perfect.”

Logan laughs. “Okay, no. I’m far from that.”

Veronica shakes her head, paddling closer to him. “You’re perfect to me. I mean look at this.” She gestures around at the pool. “All this to cheer me up.”

“ _You_ did this,” he reminds her. “I just played along.”

“Not just the obstacle course. _All of this_. You showed up and whisked me away when I needed you to. No questions asked. You brought me here and gave me this long weekend to try and heal. All because we meant something to each other once, because we _loved_ each other once. And maybe you knew that your love for me hadn’t stopped, but you had no way of knowing that I still loved you when I asked you to leave with me. You only knew how we left things, and that my favorite person was gone, and that I was in pain. Nobody else would do all this for me. You have the biggest heart, L. You turned out perfect.”

He slides off his raft and wades over to her, scooping her off of hers and letting her legs settle back around his waist. He holds her close, letting his hands slide over her back.

“It’s healing me too, you know,” he tells her. “To have you back like this, all in like this…I’ve never gotten over you. I’ve never wanted to. And I hate the circumstances that brought you back to me, but without them, how much longer were we both willing to wait for each other?”

“I was going to come back to Neptune whether my Dad was fine with it or not. We’d have found each other. And maybe it would have taken us longer than a long weekend to hash everything out, but we would have gotten there. I have to believe that.”

He kisses her neck, her thighs squeezing around him a little tighter as he does so.

“If I’d fucked it up and lost you again –”

“Hey,” he cuts her off. “No one’s fucking up here. We both know what we want is each other and we’re going to fight like hell if we have to, to keep it. But I don’t think it will come to that. We’ll fight. Obviously, we’ll fight. But it’s not going to send either of us running this time.”

“That’s me,” she says softly against his neck. “I’m the one who runs.”

“You’re not running now.”

She shakes her head, her wet hair falling over her shoulder and onto his. “No. No more running. That stays with past me too.”

He skims his fingertips up her spine. “Hey, want to do something crazy tonight?”

“Crazier than this and hot tub sex?”

He laughs as she pulls away to look at him. “Yes, crazier than all of that. It’s our last night here, let’s go out.”

“Like on a date?”

“Yeah. On a fancy, rich people in Malibu date.”

“If you want rich and fancy, you’re going to have to take me shopping first.”

“Gold digger,” he teases.

“Man whore,” she teases back.

“So, you in?” he asks, dragging his hands back down to cup her ass.

Veronica smiles, nodding. “I suppose we’re due for a proper date anyway. I’m in.”


	15. Chapter 15

Logan straightens out his tie before smoothing down the lapels on his suit jacket. He hadn’t anticipated needing to wear this again this weekend. But he was determined to give Veronica a nice, fancy evening out and the restaurant he’d made reservations at anticipated a dress code well above a t-shirt. He’d offered to let her take his car to go shopping again but she had insisted she was fine with just wearing the black dress she’d driven up here in.

_“I used to consider this one of my elegant dresses long before it became the dress I failed to bury my father in.”_

He steps out of the bathroom and finds her staring at her reflection in the full-length mirror in the bedroom. The cardigan that had originally accompanied the ensemble is clutched in her fists, and she wrings the fabric back and forth with a nervousness as she takes in her appearance.

“You don’t have to wear that dress,” he tells her.

“What else am I supposed to do with it? Burn it?”

“That’s an option,” he says, walking over to her. He stands behind her, his reflection appearing at her side in the mirror. “Or you could donate it. Bury it in the back of your closet never to be worn again.”

“It’s the only dress I have with me.”

“You went out and bought a swimsuit this morning in pursuit of reliving our middle school years, why didn’t you just go out again and buy a dress?”

“I told you,” she says, meeting his gaze in the mirror. “I used to love this dress.”

“So, you want to get rid of everything that reminds you of him?”

She shakes her head. “That’s not how I do things. I wore that necklace Lilly gave me until the clasp broke. Your room key to your old suite at The Grand is still in my wallet.”

He raises his eyebrows at her. “You still have that? I wonder if it still works.”

She shrugs, reaching up to adjust the straps on her dress.

Logan shakes his head. “Okay, well, did Keith give you this dress? Did you associate it with him in anyway before Wednesday?”

“No,” she answers quietly.

“Then it’s not the same thing as getting rid of Lilly’s necklace or my old room key. It’s just a dress.”

Her bottom lip quivers and she reaches up to wipe at her eyes. “I wasn’t there when he died _or_ when they buried him. His ghost is going to haunt me forever.”

Now he gets it. Her guilt from missing the funeral is starting to sink in. It’s not even about the memory associated with the dress, but what wearing it now represents. She wasn’t there. For any of it. And she could have easily been at that funeral, _she was_ , but her pain had driven her away. And now, she’s looking at it as yet another way she thinks she failed her father.

Logan wraps his arms around her from behind, pulling her back against his chest. “Being there was too much for you to handle. I think he would forgive you for that.”

“I used to see Lilly all the time after she died. As crazy as it sounds, her ghost stopped me from getting on that bus Cassidy crashed. I thought I saw her and followed her and the bus left without me. But I haven’t seen her in years. She doesn’t even show up in my dreams anymore.”

He nods. “I used to see her too. Maybe she finally crossed over or something. Finished whatever unfinished business she had left. I mean it took us a while to actually find her killer. And then the bastard got away with it, thank you Neptune court system. But uh, I don’t know, maybe the last thing she had to do was to save you from that bus crash. I don’t think I’ve seen her or dreamed about her like I used to ever since.”

“Do you think my dad has any unfinished business?” she asks softly.

“From what I know about Keith, maybe just getting you to forgive yourself for all of this.”

“That’s harder than it sounds.”

He bends and places a kiss against her temple. “When we head back tomorrow, do you want to make a pitstop at the cemetery? Maybe talking to him again would help.”

“It’s not like he can hear me, Logan.”

“If Lilly can stop you from getting on a bus, your dad can hear what you need to say to get you your closure.”

She spins in his arms, slipping her arms around his waist and pressing her head against his chest. “I’ll think about it.”

“Not pressuring you or anything,” he says, rubbing at her back. “Just trying to help you heal.”

“I know, L. And you have been. It’s still just…a lot.”

“I know it is,” he sighs. “Let’s go eat, huh? Put off the world for one more night.”

She looks back up at him. “We made it to junior year.”

He quirks an eyebrow at her in question.

“You took me out to dinner a lot that summer,” she explains. “Mostly, I think, so you had an excuse to feel me up in the back of your Xterra afterwards.”

“I can feel you up in the back of the BMW later if that’s what you’re after.”

She shakes her head, grinning as she tucks her head back down against his chest. “I miss that eyesore of a car. Ever think about getting a paint job on your new one?”

Logan laughs. “In shocking news, I have actually grown up a bit since then, and I’m quite content with the current color of my car.”

“So, what? Only teenagers drive bright yellow cars?”

“Only when they’re trying to piss off their dad,” he smirks. “Son, that color will only draw attention to you. The paparazzi will constantly be following you back home.”

“I don’t remember ever seeing paparazzi outside of your house.”

“Need I remind you how big Aaron’s ego was?”

Veronica laughs, stepping out from his embrace and tugging on his arm to lead him toward the door. “Come on, I’m hungry.”

* * *

The restaurant is situated right along the beach. The outdoor patio is covered by an elegant open-air canopy with vines and flowers twisting around the supports and overhead arches almost making it feel like something out of a storybook. There are twinkle lights threaded throughout the vines, that will no doubt give the appearance of stars once it’s darker out. Their table is tucked away in a corner with a great view of both the ocean and the sunset. Most of the other diners here tonight have opted for indoor seating, leaving the patio pretty much to themselves save for one other couple a few tables over.

Logan watches her flip open the menu, chuckling to himself when he sees her eyes grow wide, likely at the pricing.

“Are they going to bring me the entire cow for this price?” she mutters.

“I’m not sure what you would do with an entire cow.”

“When you said you were taking me to an expensive restaurant –”

“I’ve got this Veronica, it’s fine. Order whatever sounds good to you.”

“Are you going to help me pay off my student loans while you’re at it?” she mutters, turning the page to the wine list. “Let me ask you something, is there a certain type of grape that grows on pure gold vines?”

He laughs. “I don’t know, do you want to find out?”

“You can’t be serious. You are _not_ spending that much money on a bottle of wine.”

“You have seen the house we’re staying at right now, haven’t you? I charge a fair rate. I can afford this bottle. And the filet mignon you’re eyeing that you think is worth the price of a whole cow. Could have fed you like this in high school too, if you had let me.”

Veronica holds a hand up to her chest. “If I had _let_ you?”

“Yeah, exactly. You know as well as I do that you would never let me spend my money on you. It was a pride thing.”

She sighs, shaking her head.

“You were so anti-09er,” he continues on. “Like any association with us was the worst possible thing in the world. Like we hadn’t all been your friends at one point.”

“Oh yeah some friends,” she grumbles. “Ones who all turned their backs on me once my best friend died and my dad lost his position of power in Neptune. And it’s not like I was actually friends with any of them besides you and the Kanes. _That’s_ why I had no one left. I was only ever included in things because Lilly and Duncan were. And then you gave up on me too and that was that.”

He exhales a long breath. “Veronica –”

“Look, it’s okay. I get it now. You were coping. Dealing with it all the best you could. But all those other ‘09ers? I never liked them. They weren’t my friends and I didn’t want to be a part of them. And I didn’t want you spending your money on me because I didn’t want you to think that you had to in order for me to like you. I mean look at the gift from you I’ve been holding on to all these years. A hotel room key. It’s useless without you living in that room but…”

“I think it goes back to the messed-up relationship my parents had again. Aaron would fuck up and then buy my mom something expensive to make up for it. He started hitting me as a kid and would buy me some expensive toy to apologize. Money was how he showed that, despite everything, he actually cared. And even when I got older and was able to see right through his bullshit…I guess it had already been drilled into me.”

She hums, reaching for his hand across the table. “It _is_ a love language you know. I mean technically it’s receiving gifts and not giving them, but still.”

“Yeah, but aren’t they supposed to be more meaningful and heartfelt instead of just exuberant?”

She shrugs. “Some people are into exuberant.”

The waitress shows up at their table looking to take their drink orders. Logan orders them an expensive bottle of wine, but not the priciest one that had Veronica rolling her eyes. Maybe he was trying to show off a bit tonight, but he can also take a hint. He already has her. There’s no need to try and win her over. And he knows her well enough to know she can’t be won over by money anyway.

“So, you’re into what? Stolen property?” he asks once the waitress leaves.

Veronica rolls her eyes at him. “People take hotel room keys all the time. They get deactivated after check out.”

“So, you’re just sentimental.”

“Would that be such a bad thing?”

He smirks. “Might tarnish your tough exterior reputation a bit there.”

“Tough _exterior_ ,” she replies, emphasizing the second word. “I can be all mush on the inside.”

“Like a marshmallow, huh?”

“Exactly.”

He tries to comb back through his memory, thinking of something of hers he’s kept, when the waitress returns with the bottle of wine and to ask if they’re ready to order food. They do so and she leaves again.

“A lotion bottle.”

She cocks her head at him. “What?”

He laughs a little, momentarily forgetting she can’t actually follow his train of thoughts. “There’s this lotion bottle that you left in my room at The Grand in college. It’s a tiny thing – travel size – must have fallen out of your purse or you took it out to use it and forgot to put it back. I still have it. It smells like you.”

“And _I’m_ the sentimental one?”

He laughs again, rubbing at the back of his neck. “Carrie used it once. I freaked out on her for it for no real reason. Telling her that it wasn’t hers and she should ask next time before just using things. She was so confused. I mean it’s clearly not a guy’s lotion – it’s all floral scented and what not. I guess she was right about me having one foot out the door the entire time, huh? I just couldn’t see it. Didn’t want to.”

She reaches for his hand across the table again. “I’d freak out too if Piz had started wearing your cologne. I don’t have a bottle of it lying around or anything, but if he’d gone and picked it out for himself? I would have made him return it.”

“Why’d we spend so much time lying to ourselves that this thing between us was over?”

“Because we were both too stubborn to admit when we were wrong?” she asks, with a little lift of her shoulders.

He sighs, squeezing her hand before releasing it to reach for his glass of wine. “Sometimes I think about what would have happened if our relationship had survived that first year at Hearst. Would you have still gone to Stanford? To Columbia? I wouldn’t have been able to get into Stanford, I couldn’t have followed you. Would we have been able to survive long distance? Would I have moved to New York with you if we survived long distance long enough for you to finish undergrad?”

She bites her lower lip as she thinks about it. “I think it depends on at which point we chose to survive it. I mean yes, Stanford had always been my dream, but that whole fiasco with the sex tape is what really pushed me to get the hell out of Neptune. If that scandal had never happened, if we had been happy, I could have stayed at Hearst with you and my friends. I wouldn’t have had to run if there was nothing to run from.”

She buries her face in her hands and he’s pretty sure he hears her mutter “shit.”

“What’s wrong?” Logan asks.

She leans back in her chair, crossing her arms over her chest. “I’m just like her.”

“Who?”

“My mother.”

He sees the pained expression on her face and he’s a little confused. She’s not an alcoholic and he’s missing the connection.

“Like her how?” he asks.

“The running. She ran when things got tough. I do that. I’ve _always_ done that. Hell, I did it just this week. Left my dad alone just like she did.”

_Oh._

“Veronica –”

She cuts him off. “I ran away from this relationship so many times. You can’t let me do that anymore. Put a child lock on the front door or something.”

“Veronica.”

This time when he says her name, she stops talking, meeting his gaze.

“You may run,” he starts. “But unlike your mother, you always come back.”

“I thought I’d grown up,” she says, dropping her gaze to the table. “I was done with the running. But things got hard in New York, and I wanted to run home. My dad died and rather than dealing with it, I ran away to Malibu with my ex-boyfriend. I’m no different than how I’ve always been.”

“That’s not true.”

She looks up at him again.

“I’m not your ex-boyfriend, I’m your boyfriend.”

“Logan,” she whines.

He smirks. “Seriously though. It’s not true. The old Veronica? She wouldn’t talk about her grief or her hurt feelings or the ways in which she messed up. She wouldn’t have let me in the way you have this week. You _have_ grown up. We both have. Does that make us perfect? Not even close. But you’re aware of your issues. Admitting you have a problem is the first step, after all. This is what our late 20s are for – finding ourselves, finding growth.”

She gives him a small smile. “I just don’t want to find myself running from this – from us – again.”

“Tell you what, if you do? I promise to chase after you. Bring you back home.”

“Home as in Neptune?”

“Home as in with me.”

Her smile grows before she ducks her head and lets her hair fall in front of her face.

“What? Too cheesy?” Logan asks, laughing.

She shakes her head, starting to laugh too. “No, no it’s perfect.”

Their waitress returns with their food and they fall into a comfortable silence as they start eating.

“Hey Logan?” she asks after a few minutes.

He hums in response around a bite of food.

“If you’re my home, does that mean I’m yours?” she asks.

He nods. “You’re my home, Veronica. And it feels damn good to finally be back.”


	16. Chapter 16

It’s Sunday morning. They have to go back today. Back to reality. Back to Neptune. Back to New York. No more hiding in the memories of their teenage years. No longer can their world exist solely in this house with just the two of them. They have to let the rest of the world back in.

The daydream is over.

Logan is pleasantly surprised to find her still pressed up against his side when he wakes. She finally slept through the night last night – curled up against him after sex and doesn’t appear to have moved since.

He worries about her. Worries she’ll stop sleeping once she’s back in New York trying to tie up her life there so she can move back home. Worries that she’s become dependent on his comfort and safety to get her through the night.

_“You used to make me feel safe.”_

He thinks about going with her – helping her pack, helping her make phone calls – but he’s already missed three days of work. It’s not like he hasn’t banked enough hours of paid time off – all he does is work anymore anyway – but he feels like he has to wrap up his own projects while he waits for her to return. At the very least, he has to make room for her stuff at his place. They may be telling themselves it’s only temporary until she finds a place of her own, but deep down he thinks they both know that once she moves in, she’s never leaving.

He watches her sleep. She looks peaceful and he hopes it’s the kind of peace she was searching for when they escaped out here. He hopes that he helped her, hopes that he can continue helping her long after they leave Malibu.

Logan reaches for his phone on the nightstand, being careful not to disturb her in the process. He wants to look up the lease agreement for the new tenants – make sure he has enough time to bring in the cleaning crew after they leave today, see if they already have a lease termination date set in mind. He can’t shake away the thoughts of moving back in here with Veronica and building their lives together. There’s a new life to this place with her here – one he doesn’t want to lose.

He hopes that she’ll breathe that same life into his place back in Neptune. That just having her there –in his bed, on his couch, making breakfast in his kitchen – will make everything better. No more being the last one to leave work every night. No more being alone.

He got her back just when he was starting to worry that he would forget her forever.

It makes him want to laugh now. How he ever thought he was capable of forgetting Veronica Mars. Or even that she was capable of forgetting him.

She stirs beside him, stretching out her back without opening her eyes. She curls against him tighter, like she knows if she allows herself to wake up, she has to leave this place and him. He’ll let her keep fake sleeping for as long as she needs. Her stomach will wake her up for real eventually.

Logan finds the lease agreement in his e-mail. The new tenants aren’t due in for another week and have signed on for a year-long lease with the option to renew at the end of it. He makes a note to talk to his lawyer about potentially cancelling the house’s rentability after their first year is up. Of course, moving out here will depend on what Veronica decides to do for her career. Lawyers and detectives are both needed in Malibu but relocating Mars Investigations might be too hard for her. And because he knows her as well as he does, his gut is telling him she’s headed back to the P.I. business.

But still, maybe they can find the time to sneak up here for a weekend every now and then. A home away from home. Another piece in their future together.

“It’s bright,” Veronica mutters softly into his chest. “Daylight.”

“Yep. That pesky sun rose up again.”

She grumbles, hooking one of her legs across his hips and shaking her head to get her hair to fall in front of her eyes as though it could help block out the light.

“Don’t wanna get up,” she complains. “Don’t wanna leave.”

“I know how you feel,” Logan sighs.

“Does the world really need us? Are we _that_ important?”

“In the grand scheme of the entire world? Probably not. But to the other people in our lives? I’d say yes.”

“It’s not like I have a job yet.”

“No, but I do. And you have some friends who are probably still extremely worried about you. Have you checked in with Mac or Wallace at all since the day we got here?”

She shakes her head against him.

“Maybe give them a call before we head out,” he suggests, skimming a hand down her back. “Let them know we’re on our way.”

“I know yesterday I said I wanted to be done with running, but I think I lied. I can’t do this. I can’t go back.”

He drapes his other arm across her torso, hugging her against him. “You _can_ do this. You’re badass Veronica Mars. And no one is asking you to do it alone. You’ve got your friends and you’ve got me.”

“Going back makes it real,” she says softly.

“So does staying here. Avoiding it, isn’t going to bring him back.”

“But moving on with my life will?”

“No, but getting that closure you need will make things easier over time. Remember when my mom died? I couldn’t even accept that she was really gone until I got you to investigate. Hiding out here is kind of like that. You need to go home and find Trina waiting for you. Metaphorically. Trina’s in Chicago right now. I think.”

She laughs a little, brushing her lips across his chest. “You gonna hold me in the metaphorical hotel lobby while I cry?”

He brushes the hair back from her face. “Been doing it all week, why stop now?”

She makes a little sound that comes across as a laugh trapped in a hiccup. “Can we find that donut place again on the way? I don’t know if they’re open all day or only have morning hours, but those were really good.”

He laughs, full and hearty. “I promise to find you donuts, yes.”

She hums, kissing his chest again.

“Have you given any more thought as to whether or not you want to stop by the cemetery?” he asks.

“Can I think more while we drive?”

“Of course.”

She nods, readjusting her head against him so she’s more comfortable. “I uh, I need to remember to check in for my flight. And I need to start making calls – canceling his credit cards and insurance and all of that stuff.”

“Don’t worry about that right now, okay?”

“But someone needs to –”

“How about I call Cliff when we get back, how does that sound? He can use his lawyer powers to help do all that stuff. You can just show him where all the documents he’s going to need are. You just focus on New York and getting things wrapped up for yourself there right now.”

“And his car,” she continues on like he hadn’t said anything. “What am I supposed to do with his car? Sell it? Keep it?”

“Veronica –”

“And he has all of these baseball cards. He always said they were worth something, but are they really? And again what do I do with them? Sell them now to clear up space? Hang onto them until I need money and see if they’re worth anything? Keep them for some future kid I may have in case they like baseball?”

Logan wraps his arms around her a little tighter. “We’ll figure it all out, don’t worry about that right now.”

“There’s so much to do. So much I didn’t even think of at first. Where do I start?”

“Start with taking care of yourself. You’re not going to be any help worrying about 20 things at once. Do what you need to do to get yourself moved back to Neptune. Cliff and I will take care of the more pressing matters and once you’re back and settled we’ll deal with the baseball cards and all of that together.”

“Logan, I can’t let you –”

“Let me do it. I want to help.”

She stops trying to argue, stops listing off the million little things running through her head at the moment. She just snuggles down against him with her head still pressed to his chest. He figures she can hear his heartbeat positioned like that; figures she’s listening to tether herself back to the fact that not all is lost.

She has him. Her dad is gone, but she’s not alone. Never alone. Not anymore.

Her voice is quiet when she speaks again, almost sounding far away. “No one leaves you an instruction manual on what to do when your parents die. And being an only child…it’s all on me. How did you do this? You were still in high school.”

He lets out a long sigh, fingers brushing against her back. “Family lawyers mostly. I didn’t really do anything just signed what they asked me to. I guess Weevil did me a favor in burning down my house – there was no crap left for me to sort through. Although you did find plenty of junk stored upstairs here that I had no idea still existed so thanks for that.”

“You were going through all of this when we were dating and I just –”

“Hey, no. That was different. My circumstances were different. You were there for me when my mom died, helped me out even. And that was before we even started dating. That was when I finally remembered just how incredible you are. Despite everything we’d been through that past year, you still showed up when I asked. And my dad…he wasn’t like yours, Veronica, you know that.”

“I know but still –”

“Do you remember what all else happened that day? In a span of 24 hours, we graduated high school, you were threatened and attacked by Cassidy, had a gun pulled on us, found out you _had_ actually been raped at Shelly’s party, thought your dad had been murdered, witnessed a suicide, found out your dad was alive, got back together with me, and then found out that my dad was _actually_ dead. My dad the _abusive murderer_. There was too much else going on to even care about him.”

She props herself up on her elbows so she’s looking at him. “You are so much stronger than I’ve ever given you credit for.”

Logan shakes his head at her. “I’m just good at faking it. Acting genes and all that.”

She shakes her head in return. “And you’re seriously willing to take on my shit as well?”

“It’s sort of a package deal when you love someone, isn’t it?”

She bends her head, her hair draping around her face like a curtain. “I hate that it took losing him, to bring you back to me. I should have seen it sooner, should have known.”

“It’s not like I was seeking you out either.”

Veronica looks back up at him, her hair falling back to the sides. “I guess we have to get ready to leave now, don’t we?”

He reaches up and tucks her hair back behind her ears. “This isn’t goodbye, Veronica, don’t forget that. You’re coming back to me. We’re together.”

“I know,” she says, giving him a small smile. “Doesn’t mean I’m ready to invite the rest of the world back in yet.”

“We at least still have a long car ride ahead of us. And donuts. We can’t forget the donuts.”

That gets her to laugh as she reluctantly pulls herself off of him. He misses the warmth and weight of her body immediately.

“I’ll go get packed,” she tells him. “Or well, put the stuff we bought back in their shopping bags, I guess? We can take on the rest of the world from there.”

* * *

The drive back to Neptune feels so much shorter than the drive up to Malibu did. Three hours in the car with her is nothing after four whole days together. Before he knows it, they’re back at the donut shop in San Clemente, a mere 20-30 minutes away from home. He’s not even sure how they passed the time to get here. She’d dozed off for a while in the beginning, woke up insisting they play another couple rounds of “dirty” I Spy. There’d been a few miles of comfortable silence where he let his thoughts drift to the number of work e-mails undoubtedly waiting for him in his inbox and the meeting he’d missed on Thursday. She’d talked a little more about her internship, her own to-do list likely starting to cycle through her thoughts again.

And now they’re here. Essentially back where it all started.

Logan waits for her at the same picnic table they’d sat at only a few days ago. Time can be such a funny and fickle thing. She would barely talk to him that morning – answering him with small smiles and turning the conversation back toward dogs when things got too emotional. Cut to now when they’ve not only aired out all of their dirty laundry but washed it and let it dry again.

The bell dings on the door of the donut shop and he looks up to find Veronica walking toward him, trying to balance two to-go coffee cups on top of the donut box. He makes a move to help her, but she insists that she’s got it and gingerly sets everything down on the table. He slides a coffee cup in his direction, waiting for her to make the first move on the donuts. To no one’s surprise, she plucks out a chocolate one. He does the same.

“Good as you remembered?” he asks, watching her take the first bite.

She nods around her mouthful, giving him a little thumbs up. He takes a bite out of his and has to agree. He’s going to make surprising her with donuts from this place a regular thing.

“Have you given any more thought as to where you want me to take you when we get back to Neptune? Do you want me to just take you back to Mac’s place or…” Logan trails off, giving her the open-ended option.

“It’s just a pile of dirt, isn’t it?”

He thinks he knows what she’s asking about, but he wants to clarify. “What is?”

“My dad’s grave. The headstone isn’t ready yet. It’s just a pile of dirt in some plot I had to buy.” She shakes her head, eating more of her donut.

“Do you want to see the pile of dirt?”

“I’d rather see him. But I guess this is what’s left now. Dirt.”

“They’ll plant grass on it eventually,” he tells her with a small shrug.

She smiles at him before finishing off her donut. “Maybe…could you take me to the cemetery and if it’s too much, if I can’t handle it –”

“Then I’ll get you out of there, no questions asked. Yeah, I can do that.”

She nods, wrapping her hands around her coffee cup. “Do you think Mac will be upset if I get my stuff from her place and crash with you tonight? I can just take a cab to the airport in the morning. It’s an early flight, you don’t have to –”

“Veronica, I’m not letting you take a cab all the way to the airport. Stay with me and we’ll get up early and I’ll take you. Mac will understand.”

“She and Wallace are going to be so pissed at me. I left them alone to deal with everything – the funeral, the people. He wasn’t their dad.”

“I think they’ll understand. They’re your best friends. They know this is hard on you.”

“And they know I have a knack for running away from my problems?”

He grins at her. “I wasn’t going to say it, but yeah that too.”

She sighs, lifting the lid on the donut box and eyeing the remaining treats inside.

“Okay, cemetery first,” she tells him. “Then I’ll go explain myself to Wallace and Mac before we get to spend one last night together.”

“Come on now, don’t phrase it like that. You’re not permanently relocating back to New York.”

She plucks another donut from the box. “No, but I don’t know how long it will take for me to get everything wrapped up to come back. It might take longer than we’re anticipating.”

“Doesn’t matter. I’ll be here waiting when you do.”

* * *

He watches her take in the sight of the still unmarked grave of her father. Here lies Keith Mars. A good man. A _great_ man. Taken away from his daughter far too soon.

Veronica turns in his direction and at first, he thinks she’s about to ask him if they can leave, but instead she just reaches for his hand, twining her fingers through his and squeezing, her eyes refocusing on the ground.

“I feel like I should be apologizing,” she says softly.

He starts to ask her what she wants to apologize for when he realizes she might actually be talking to her dad. He squeezes her hand back, encouraging her to continue.

“I need you to know that I wasn’t happy in New York, Dad. The lawyer thing isn’t what I thought it would be. I missed investigating. I missed…you. Seems stupid to say that out loud now, doesn’t it? Now I’m stuck just permanently missing you. And I missed all the standard ways to say goodbye to a person – the hospital, the funeral – so now I’m standing here talking to a pile of dirt. At least Logan’s not judging for me it. And yeah, I said Logan. He’s here, he’s with me, and we’re…together…again. But I don’t want you worrying about me. I’m moving back to Neptune to keep Mars Investigations up and running and to be with Logan. And I really feel like everything’s going to work out this time. I’m going to be happy. _We’re_ going to be happy.”

She glances over at Logan and smiles at him before looking back down at the dirt.

“I hate that you won’t get to see it. If Logan and I decide to get married or have kids even, you won’t be there for any of it, and I hate that. You deserve to be here; I deserve to have you here. You and I deserve so much more than to have our last words to each other be in anger. That was never us. We were all each other had for a lot of years. But I need you to know, you’re not leaving me alone now, not really. I have Logan. And Wallace. And Mac. And they may not be you, but they love me and I love them. I’m gonna be fine. You did good, Dad. You raised a strong, independent daughter.”

She breaks after that, curling into Logan’s side and crying into his shirt. He holds her against him, rubbing her back to help calm her down.

“I’d pour one out for you, Keith, but I don’t have any beer in my car. Can I interest you in a donut instead?” he asks.

He hears Veronica laugh a little at that, but she doesn’t unfurl away from his chest just yet.

“She’s right, you know,” he keeps talking. “You did an incredible job with raising her. And I do love her, and I promise to take good care of her. And if I do decide to propose someday, I’ll be sure to come back here and ask you first. Not sure how you’d tell me no though. Do you have the power to get me struck by lightening? I really hope not. But I’d hope that wouldn’t even be an issue – that we’d have your blessing. Because believe it or not, we do actually make each other happy. And that’s all a dad like you ever wants for his child, isn’t it? For her to be happy.”

He feels her lips at his cheek and turns to look down at her. “He wants you to be happy.”

She nods, holding his gaze. “I know.”

“I don’t think he has plans to haunt you.”

The corners of her mouth lift up into a little smile. “I know.”

“You want to tell him anything else?”

She shakes her head this time. “He knows the rest.”

“You ready?”

She reaches up and kisses his cheek again. “Thank you, Logan. For everything.”

He bends and kisses her forehead. “Always.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for reading and coming along on this journey with me. I appreciate all of you and all of your kind words you've shared with me over this fic. Until next time! *waves*


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